Watching Jimmy

by Nancy Hartry

  I stand like I’m nailed to the linoleum floor.

  “I’m going.”

  Mrs. MacGregor’s voice turns from being motherly to all business.

  “Of course you are, dear. Mr. MacGregor will take you to the audition. Jimmy can stay with me.”

  The minister helps me on with my coat. Jimmy doesn’t make a whimper when I leave.

  Mr. MacGregor whistles “Mairzy Doats” all the way to the church and I’m tempted to join in. I follow him up to the nave where a group of people are clustered around a piano. The minister speaks to the choirmaster who seems to be expecting me. I warm up with a couple of scales, then the piano player just starts playing the “Maple Leaf Forever.”

  I close my eyes and sing. There can be no thoughts of anything else now. Not The Bastard, not Uncle Ted, not anything. Until I’m done, I am completely unaware of how quiet the room has become. There’s no coughing or throat clearing, just rapt attention.

  I open my eyes. The adult choristers are beaming.

  “Nicely done,” the choirmaster says. “Carolyn, do you read music?”

  “Oh, yes,” I say. “I used to take piano lessons before my grandfather died, but now we can’t afford them and since he died, I don’t play much because it makes my mom sad. Besides, I’m always at Aunt Jean’s.” I’m gushing. I’m giving too much information. The minister and the choirmaster exchange looks before he asks, “Have you had any voice training, honey?”

  “Only from my grandpa. He was a barbershopper. That’s how my mom met my dad. He was a barbershopper too, but Grandpa didn’t want my mom to marry him because, even though he sounded good, he was a real no-good.”

  I cover my mouth. What is wrong with me? I feel drunk and giddy, like Jimmy, but I haven’t tasted a drop of whiskey. Mr. MacGregor is looking at me.

  The choirmaster hands me a three-ring binder. I step into the choir, folded into the front row by lovely ladies with big chests and bigger smiles.

  Let me say this about Christmas music. It is God-inspired. To think that a tiny baby with “no room for his head” grew up to save the world. It’s a miracle, a great miracle that every year we celebrate His birthday.

  Finally we sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and I sense that choir practice is ending. The piano player has moved to the organ. The building shakes with the power of that song and our voices. “God and sinners reconciled!” I know what reconcile means because I looked it up. It’s like getting back together again, living in harmony, that kind of thing.

  Uncle Ted is a sinner. I don’t expect to ever reconcile with him. Maybe if he was struck by lightning and made stupid like our Jimmy, maybe then.

  Uncle Ted is a rich man. He can afford an operation for Jimmy. He should reconcile his mistakes, instead of moving in and taking Aunt Jean’s house right out from under her. He should make things right. Why doesn’t God force him to do that? I wish I could ask Mr. MacGregor to explain, but I can’t do that.

  When all the people are putting on their coats and calling their good-byes, I approach the choirmaster. My heart is tapping allegro in my chest. Can he hear it? I take a big breath. “Do I have the job?”

  “You certainly do. You’ll make a lovely addition to our choir.”

  “I don’t want to seem rude, but when do I get paid?”

  He consults the note that Mr. MacGregor hands him. “Twice a month. But you must make every practice or forfeit a week’s wages. I’ll also dock you for bad behavior.”

  I make a face because there won’t be any bad behavior from me. Not here. “Thank you. You can count on me.”

  Mr. MacGregor helps me on with my coat. I feel like Cinderella. I’ve forgotten our troubles for a few hours, but now they’re back hitting me harder than ever. Aunt Jean. Jimmy. Ted.

  “May I please use the phone when we get back?” I concentrate on using my best manners like Mom and Aunt Jean have taught me.

  “Certainly.”

  I call Aunt Jean’s. The line rings and rings and rings, then picks up. This time, there’s only heavy breathing like someone has answered the phone by mistake or tucked the receiver under his chin.

  I turn my back to the minister and whisper into the phone, “Where’s Aunt Jean? Where is she? What have you done to her?”

  Nothing but Ted breathing. I hang up the receiver.

  “Sorry. No one’s home, yet. My mom should be off at midnight. Sorry to be such a bother.”

  “Jimmy’s sound asleep,” says Mrs. MacGregor. “I made up a cot for you in the spare room.”

  “No, thank you,” I say. “I’ll just sit here and wait by the phone. I couldn’t go to sleep.”

  “But tomorrow’s a school day. You need your rest.”

  “My dear, why don’t we let Carolyn lounge on the couch? I have work to do on my sermon.”

  “Yes, I can keep you company,” I say. “I’d like to help.”

  Mrs. MacGregor hands me a pillow and a quilt.

  The next thing I know, it’s morning. When I open my eyes, my mom is crouching on the floor, peering at my face.

  “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” she says.

  I struggle to piece it together. Where am I? The rectory!

  “How did you get here?” I rub sleep from my eyes.

  “Mr. MacGregor is a pretty good detective. He read the name tag Aunt Jean sewed in your coat. Then he called me after I got home.”

  I’m wide awake now. “Where’s Aunt Jean?”

  “In St. Joseph’s Hospital.”

  “In the hospital? Why? Did she fall?”

  “Sh, Carolyn. Calm down. Nothing like that. She was rushed in with internal bleeding. Woman’s troubles. She needs an operation.”

  My voice rises hysterically. “Who’s going to pay for that? Will they let her die if she can’t pay?”

  “Sh-hh-hh.” Mom grabs my body and rocks me back and forth. “Calm yourself, you. Ted has taken care of everything. Ted will pay”

  I’m relieved that Ted won’t let Aunt Jean bleed to death. “When?”

  My mom is confused. She thinks I mean when will Ted pay. “No. No, when will she have the operation. How long will she be in the hospital?”

  “The operation is scheduled for this afternoon and she’ll be in for eight to ten days.”

  “Ten days?” Ten days. I close my eyes and cover my ears, because I’m not sure I want to know the answer to my next question.

  “And who’ll look after Jimmy?” I whisper.

  “It’s all arranged. Jean says Ted has been wonderful. He’s offered to stay with Jimmy. He can run his business from the kitchen table.”

  “I bet he can. Jimmy isn’t going to like it.”

  What I mean to say is, I don’t like it, and my mom knows me well enough to take my meaning.

  “Carolyn, Carolyn, we don’t have too many options here. We’re not family.”

  Mr. MacGregor asks to speak to my mom while I wrestle Jimmy into his coat.

  Staying with Ted is not an option! I scream this in my head. I don’t say it out loud. After all, I’m in God’s house. Or down the road from his house.

  And what would be the point?

  Ten Ted-days in a row! I think I’m going to be sick.

  My mom has taken over Aunt Jean’s kitchen and she’s making a lot of noise washing up the dishes. She cleans like a crazy women when she’s upset. Mom folds a tea towel and hangs it on the oven door and turns to me.

  The rye bottle is not in the garbage can. I check. The lace table runner from the parlor has been rinsed out and is hanging on the back of a kitchen chair to dry. I take a sniff. It doesn’t smell. Ted has covered his tracks.

  “Ted will be home for dinner … regular time. He asked me to watch Jimmy until he gets back.”

  I make a face when I hear Ted’s name. My mother brushes the hair out of her face. “I hope Jimmy will have a nap.”

  “He will if you will, Mom. He’ll fall asleep in his bed if you lie down beside him on the floor. It works every time. Y
ou can leave after he’s fallen asleep and he won’t care.”

  “You seem to be quite an expert. Maybe you should be helping out by doing some babysitting.”

  I want to say that I have all the babysitting I can handle with Jimmy, but that’s not what she wants to hear. She doesn’t want to know that she pays Jean to watch me and then I spend my time watching Jimmy It’s not supposed to be how it works.

  Mom makes Jimmy and me French toast to use up the stale bread. It’s our favorite. Jimmy likes it swimming in maple syrup but I prefer catsup. I mop my plate clean and there are only faint red streaks left on the plate.

  Jimmy’s a sticky mess with syrup in his hair and on his ear. I tense up thinking that Jimmy’s going to get yelled at by my mom, but she only laughs.

  “You’ve got to admit he’s pretty cute,” says Mom. I laugh with her. He’s pretty cute and not so dumb really. He’s been using the old typewriter to print words. His tongue goes around and around until he selects a letter before pushing it down firmly. Maybe I’ve been looking at Jimmy’s letters too long, but they’re beginning to make some sense to me. And his speaking is getting clearer.

  For example, I’m pretty sure that mk means “milk.”

  “He wants milk!”

  When my mom hands Jimmy a glass, he nods furiously and then drinks it down.

  “Good work, Jimmy.” I’m careful not to talk to him like a dog. Our Jimmy is a human being.

  “It’s time for school, Carolyn.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “Sure you do. Look at the breakfast you just ate. Off you go.”

  “Are you going to stay home all day? You’re not going to leave Jimmy for even one minute?”

  “Why would I leave Jimmy?”

  “I don’t think Ted can handle Jimmy. I don’t think he has the patience.”

  Mom is quiet. I can hear a housefly murdering itself inside the ceiling fixture.

  “What am I supposed to do, Carolyn? I have a job. I can’t lose my job. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.”

  Now the fly sounds like he is murdering his best friend.

  “Mom, I don’t have to go to school. I’ve finished all the books. I have straight As. I can stay home and look after Jimmy.”

  “No you won’t, little girl. No, you will not. Jimmy isn’t your responsibility. Your responsibility is to get an education so that you never have to live like …”

  “Us….” I open and close my mouth like a goldfish around this little word.

  There’s no arguing with my mom. I know that a good job is everything. If Aunt Jean had a good job, she’d pay Uncle Ted back and throw him out on the street. We were just lucky that Grandpa took us in.

  Money! Money! Money! It all comes back to money. Those who have it and those who don’t. And oh, boy, you better not get sick or crack your head senseless because there might never be enough for that.

  “Why don’t you see how you feel by lunch time?” Mom’s wheedling now. She thinks that if I make it until noon, I’ll stay for the whole day.

  She’s plain wrong. I’ll go to school, but I won’t risk Ted coming back early. Ted will not get his clutches on Jimmy if I have one last breath in my chest.

  Something will turn up. An idea will fall from the sky like a song. I’m sure of it.

  Old Keezor catches me out in math. She’s the first teacher in the history of time who’s tripped me up in class, and I can see by the look on the horrid Luanne Price’s face, it’s a red-letter day for her. She’s gloating. She sticks her hand up in Miss Keezor’s face and answers the oh-so-simple question about isosceles triangles that I missed hearing because I was trying to force an idea.

  Great ideas can’t be forced. They have to be teased out.

  That’s how I find myself in the principal’s office with a detention, which I’m to serve after school. That and shouting at the horrid Luanne Price to “Bug right off and mind your own business, you nosy pig” I might have called her “damn stupid” and I could have said “may you rot in hell” but I have no recollection.

  There will be no “after school” for me today, so I listen politely to the lecture from the principal. Even if he puts me in stockades and handcuffs or threatens to throw me in debtor’s prison, I will not be staying after school. I put on an attentive face, but I don’t listen. The principal is a hypocrite. Even he seems to take delight in my fall from grace. That is what he calls it. He believes that although I’m doing very well academically, I’m working well below my potential because of my attitude.

  He doesn’t know that my attitude is about to get a lot worse.

  “Now, I’m not going to call your mother and worry her as this is your first offence. But if it happens again, if you antagonize the children or your teachers in that way, I will have to call her in.”

  My mother won’t come, you stupid horse-bun, I want to shout.

  After I left for school this morning, I had to go back for Jane Eyre. I caught Mom crying in the bathroom. She told me she’s putting aside half of her paycheck for Jimmy’s operation. That’s why she’s working every shift she can get.

  Did I say that I love my mom? Did I say that I wish she’d told me? Never mind.

  Instead of answering the principal, I pretend I’m at a funeral and nod solemnly.

  These days, I lead a double life, you see. They don’t own my brain. No one owns my brain.

  At lunch time, I pack my satchel.

  “Where are you going?” Luanne Price asks.

  “Home,” I say. “I have a flu bug and a fever.” I fake a sneeze in her direction and make sure that mucous flies out of my nose and lands on her sweater set.

  “You are disgusting.”

  I smile sweetly.

  My smile quells the flip-flopping in my stomach. I have no ideas. No ideas are falling from the sky as I walk home, just red maple leaves. I take a roundabout way home, passing by St. Olave’s Church. Mrs. MacGregor is out raking leaves. I think I might march right by pretending that last evening didn’t happen, but that would be impolite. It really would, after all her kindness.

  “How is little Jimmy faring this morning?” she asks.

  “Fair to middling. He misses his mom.”

  “And who will be caring for the lad, I’m wondering, now that she’s in the hospital?”

  “Uncle Ted.” It pops out before I can stop it.

  “I see.”

  Does she really see? Does anybody else see what I saw?

  “This Uncle Ted would have to be an exceptional kind of man to look after the likes of Jimmy.”

  “He’s exceptional,” I say.

  Mrs. MacGregor puts down her rake. She hands me the corner of an old bedsheet and together we haul the leaves to the ditch out front.

  “We have an exceptional young man in our congregation who is waiting to go to divinity school next semester.”

  “You do?”

  “And,” says Mrs. MacGregor, “he’s looking for a room to rent.”

  “He is?” I have stopped breathing now. Am I dreaming?

  “And I think he and Jimmy would get along famously. It would be good experience for Andrew to interact with Jimmy on a daily basis, like a practicum.”

  “Really? Are you kidding me?”

  “Carolyn, I’m not much of a teaser. I leave all the kidding in our household to Mr. MacGregor. Yes, I’ve already proposed the idea to Andrew and he likes it. It’s fortuitous that you came along when you did. I haven’t been able to reach your mother. The line is always busy.”

  “She takes the phone off the hook if she’s sleeping. Could I ask a question, Mrs. MacGregor?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “Is Andrew a big guy or a little guy?”

  “A very big guy. He practices boxing.”

  “Oh-h-h,” I breathe. “Thanks be to God.” I’m unaware that I have said this out loud until I see the look on Mrs. MacGregor’s face.

  Mrs. MacGregor suggests that I wait while she fetches An
drew. I pick up the rake she’s left leaning against the maple tree and begin rasp rasp rasping another pile. Would my mom like the whole idea? Would Uncle Ted throw Andrew out on his ear? I am playing a game of twenty questions when Andrew comes around the corner of the church with Mrs. MacGregor. His head, covered in black curlicues and absorbed in her every word, leans down toward Mrs. MacGregor’s snow-white one. He moves like a dancer, lightly on the balls of his feet. I don’t realize how big he is until he stands in front of me.

  “This is Carolyn, lad, the girl I’ve been telling you about.”

  Andrew turns gray eyes on me and I have a flash of what it might be like to oppose him in the ring. He scares me, but then a great chuckle forms in his chest and rises up to make crinkles around his eyes.

  “Nice to meet you, Carolyn. I hear you’ve got a job for me to do.”

  His smile knocks my breath clean away. I can’t talk for the longest time until he taps my shoulder.

  “Oh. A job. Yes. Well, it’s more like babysitting, except Jimmy isn’t a baby. And it’s not up to me, really. You’ll have to talk to … well … I guess Jimmy’s Uncle. Uncle Ted.”

  “Anything I should know about this Uncle Ted?” Andrew has his hands in his front pockets and is rolling up on his toes. I glance at Mrs. MacGregor.

  “No-o-o. Not really. Ted is just a … well, Ted.”

  Mrs. MacGregor takes the rake out of my hands. Andrew shifts a canvas pack from one shoulder to the other like he’s flicking a fly off his back. “Well, then. Why don’t we just go and see the man about a job? Thanks, Mrs. MacGregor. I’ll call you and tell you how I make out.”

  I’m so dithered, I forget to say good-bye to Mrs. MacGregor. “Well, uhmm, well, I don’t think Ted’s home yet. Ted’s in plumbing supplies, you know, for homes and buildings and such. With all the new subdivisions being built, he’s doing pretty well. I mean he drives a Thunderbird. Everybody calls him Uncle Ted.” I’m babbling again.

  “Wow. A Thunderbird. Neat-o…. So, what’s your friend Jimmy like?”

  I have to look away. I can feel my throat begin to close up because of his kindness. It has been a long time since anyone showed any interest in meeting our Jimmy. I can’t speak. I keep my head turned away from Andrew and motion him to follow me. I feel like the pied piper leading the way to Aunt Jean’s front door.