Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen

by Glen Huser

  “Are you okay, Auntie?” He has blown out the candle and inhaled the cupcake.

  “Oh, yes.” I laugh.

  As he leaves, Byron keeps looking back over his shoulder, as if he can’t believe the fortune the last hour has brought him. He offered to take me back up to my room but I told him I’d be fine and I wanted, after all, another cup of coffee.

  “Aren’t you afraid it’ll keep you awake?” he fretted.

  “Byron, my dear...” I patted his hand again. “You don’t think they actually have caffeine in anything they brew here!”

  When he’s gone, I work the walker out to the patio. The June evening is warm and no mosquitoes yet. It will be possible to smoke in absolute peace. I wonder what she’s doing, the Tamara girl. Scrapping with her foster family? No — probably not. Not with the prospect of the trip to Vancouver and her modeling course hanging in the balance.

  Eddie, the caretaker, spots me from a hall window and comes out to join me. He lights up a cigarette of his own.

  “I have it for you,” he says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “A bottle of brandy. A carton of cigarillos. How can you smoke those...?” He shakes his head and laughs sadly. “They should have killed you years ago.”

  “Perhaps they contain the elixir of life. The magic smoke of an immortal dragon.”

  “You sure that’s all you been smoking?” Eddie makes a little twirling gesture by his ear.

  “You’re right, Eddie,” I chuckle. “I am a bit crazy tonight. And I’m glad you’ve brought a carton. I’m going on a little trip and I like to be well supplied.”

  “A trip!” He looks at me with surprise. “Hey, look at you! A tour!”

  “Yes, Eddie, a tour.” I finish my smoke and he helps me up to my room, coming back in a couple of minutes with a small shopping bag.

  “Usual spot?” I nod and give him his money after he stows the bag’s contents in the back of the bureau drawer, third one down. Tonight a more generous tip than usual.

  “Hey!” he smiles. “You have a wonderful trip. Mexico? Hawaii?”

  “I’m still deciding,” I say. “Pour us both a little drink of brandy. I feel like celebrating tonight.”

  Eddie retrieves the bottle from the drawer and pours shots into two plastic glasses.

  “Bon voyage!” he says.

  13

  When I take the Wrinkle Queen printed-out copies of the letters, she eyeballs them and makes a few corrections.

  “I used spell check,” I tell her.

  “No good with apostrophes or homophones,” she says. “I’d think by the time you’re in grade nine you’d know the difference between p-a-s-s-e-d and p-a-s-t. If you’re going to be a model and move in the higher circles of society, you’re going to have to learn to use language correctly.”

  “Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut,” I tell her.

  “It’s probably not a bad idea.” She gives me one of her death stares. “Fix the mistakes, run the letters off again, and I’ll sign Byron’s name and they’ll be ready to pop into the mail. Look in that top drawer, will you?” She gestures to her bureau.

  I pull out a letter. It’s got an American stamp on it.

  “From Ricardo. He’s got tickets and he’s put them aside for us.” She smiles and pats the letter. “You realize they’re worth a small fortune, and we were lucky to get them at this late date. Bless Ricardo’s heart.”

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  She looks suddenly mad and then sighs and leans back against her pillows.

  “Maybe just a bit more enthusiasm,” she says. She’s sounding crankier by the minute, and she keeps rubbing the knee that had surgery. I guess when you’re pushing a zillion, just about everything starts to hurt.

  “I think I need to get up and walk.” She struggles to sit up. She’s wearing a pink dress today and probably hasn’t noticed the coffee stains down its front. She tries to tell me how to support her as she gets off the bed, but I guess I don’t do it right and she’s moaning by the time I get her into a chair and set up her walker.

  “You have the gentle touch of a prison warden,” she mutters, waving a bony hand at her purse on the bureau. She’s not going anywhere without her brandy and smokes.

  It’s going to be a trip to remember. Two weeks with a miserable old nag who’s losing her marbles.

  I smile at her.

  It’s raining today but we find a picnic table beneath a roof overhang on the patio. Of course she has one of her skinny cigars out and is puffing away as soon as her slippers hit the patio blocks.

  “We’ll stay in a hotel,” she says through a small cloud of smoke. “There’s a place right on English Bay where I always stay when I’m in Vancouver. You can make a call when we go back to my room. I’ve got the number in my address book.” Then she levels one of her glares at me. “You can practice being a companion.”

  I come close to saying something. Like how it’d take a four-year course to learn how to be a companion to someone like her. But I chew on my lip for a second, flash the smile again and say, “Good idea.”

  Lighting up her second cigarillo, she seems to be getting into a better mood, and even manages one of her cackly laughs when she tells me about giving her nephew his birthday present.

  “You’ll need a couple of good outfits for Seattle,” she says, giving me the once over. “And do you think it’s possible to do your hair in a way that doesn’t look like you’re auditioning for a horror movie?”

  “Oh, sure.” I have my permanent smile on now. “Maybe I can dye it black and spray it in place so it’ll be hard as a rock for a month.”

  She looks at me with her witch eyes again but doesn’t say anything for a minute.

  “I have an account at Holt Renfrew. Go in and try on some dresses. Imagine...” She searches for words. “Imagine you are dressing to meet the prime minister at a banquet. You’ll need a pair of shoes, too. Have the clerk put them away and ask them to give me a call.”

  Holt Renfrew.

  Sometimes I used to walk by the Holt Renfrew windows in their big downtown store. When I was staying at the Rawdings and had a school bus pass. You could spend an hour going from one fancy dress shop window to the next. Security guards giving you the evil eye. There was one by Holt Renfrew who chased me when I stuck my tongue out at him.

  She has one more smoke and a coughing fit that lasts for about half an hour before we head back up to her room. I find the number of the Vancouver hotel in the back of a special book she has with all her trips in it. The Wrinkle Queen has a cellphone! Life is so unfair.

  “Ask for a smoking room,” she says, “and I like something with a view of the bay. Here, let me talk to the desk clerk. I know the room I want.”

  When she’s on the phone, she doesn’t sound like she’s a million years old. She sounds like she’s used to having people listen to her and doing what she says.

  The trip to Holt Renfrew will have to wait for a few days. I have a final tomorrow. English. I’ll need to study a bit but it’s actually my best subject. Math is the killer but it’s two days down the line. Shirl has my exam schedule taped to the fridge door and insists on doing the dishes tonight. But Herb is out with his bowling league so I offer to keep an eye on Lizzie and Lyle while they have their baths.

  “Where’s Dad?” Lyle pouts.

  “In jail,” I say.

  “Jail?” Lizzie is twirling around with a bath towel cape but this stops her. “He’s not in jail.”

  “How do you know?” I pour a capful of shampoo for Lyle.

  “How do you know?” Lizzie fires back.

  “Because I had him arrested.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  No wonder Herb escapes to bowling once a week. Of course, once they’re in their pajamas they beg for a story.

  “All right,” I say. “The name of this story is Great Expectations.” And I begin to tell them about Pip’s trip into the graveyard to see his parents’ grave when he runs into the esc
aped convict.

  “What’s a caped convict?” Lyle asks.

  “It’s someone who was in jail but ran away.”

  “Like Dad?”

  “That’s right,” I say, “but he’s not escaped. He’s locked up until ten o’clock tonight. Then they’ll let him out and you’ll see him at breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  Miss Whipple has given us a study sheet. Item number one tells us to review a novel we’ve studied in class during literature circles. I fish Great Expectations out of my backpack and reread a couple of my favorite parts. I like Estella the best. I bet she would have had a perfect fashion sense. Beautiful. Moving through the world with everyone paying attention to her. And not having to really do anything except be nice to a crazy old woman with lots of money.

  14

  Waiting for Skinnybones. She phoned my cell this morning to tell me the letters are ready and she’d be over by three. It’s four now.

  I think of Byron off on his holiday. He came to see me before heading to the airport. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and some kind of baggy khaki shorts with bulging pockets, and sandals.

  “Now, you’re sure you have everything you need, Auntie?” he gushed. He’d brought me a bag of toiletries, shopping from a list I’d given him. Even made a special trip to get me a carton of cigarillos. Better to have too many than too few.

  “I should stop at the office and let them know where to contact me in case of emergency.”

  “Oh, no!” I startled him, grabbing his hand. “I’ve already told them you’ll be gone, and I wrote down the names and numbers of your hotels when the travel agent got your package ready. Didn’t want you to be bothered, dear, with all the getting ready you’ve had to do.”

  For a minute I thought he was going to shed a tear, but he gulped and gave me a hug.

  “Love you, Auntie.”

  Never in his life has Byron said he loved me. I think he was as surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth as I was. Until he was about seven, he used to run and hide whenever I visited my brother. Not that I minded. He was a slow, stuttering child with a perpetually runny nose and a whiny, plaintive voice.

  “Have a wonderful trip,” I said. I walked him to the front door, afraid he might stop in at the office at the last minute.

  That was midmorning. Where is Skinnybones? It’s important to get the letters mailed as soon as possible.

  Finally she’s here, rushing in a bit breathlessly, dropping her backpack.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I was at the library using the computer. I had the letters done by two-thirty but I ran into some kids from school.”

  “You surprise me, Tamara. I thought you avoided the madding crowd.” Obviously responsibility is not this one’s middle name. I gesture toward the walker. “Let’s go outside for a bit.”

  “Just Timmy and a couple of other kids who were in my lit circle,” she says defensively. “We had caramel lattes at the Second Cup.”

  “Caramel lattes? I thought you models had to watch your weight.”

  “Brad Silverstone says I need to put on a few pounds.”

  “Well, I guess he’s the expert. Grab my purse, will you? I’ve got stamped envelopes in there.”

  “Just a week and two days,” Skinnybones reminds me as she organizes her long arms and legs into a pose at the end of the picnic table. She’s wearing jeans that look like they’ve been retrieved from a rag bag and then dragged over a costume jewelry counter, snagging all kinds of odds and ends. Chains. A couple of brooches. My Lord, is that an earring hanging onto a thread by her ankle?

  “Did you get to Holt Renfrew yet?” I can feel the smoke from my first cigarillo of the afternoon seeping through me like the fog of the norns.

  She doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I notice the flush of embarrassment reddening her cheeks.

  “You didn’t go, did you?”

  She glares at me.

  “I went. Bunch of stuck-up...”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh. Some guy came running over when I was walking by the jewelry counter, like he was afraid I was going to walk off with half the stuff. I was just trying to find the dress department.”

  She’s suddenly become fixated on a bauble sewn onto her jeans.

  “You didn’t give up.”

  “No. He kept telling me where the other stores were. The Bay. Zeller’s. So I accidentally-on-purpose knocked over an earring display and he started yelling at me. I had to wait outside by the door for about an hour until he was over on the other side of the store with a customer and then I went back in and there was this guy selling ties and shirts and he took me over to where the dresses were and this lady with silver hair.”

  “Phoebe.”

  “Yeah. Phoebe. She was friendly but you should’ve seen the look on her face when I told her I needed dresses for the opera. You know the way someone looks when they’re trying not to laugh?”

  “You have a thinner skin than I thought, Tamara.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. I do hope you managed to get something to wear.”

  “One black dress; one green. Nile green, Phoebe called it. Black pumps. She picked them all out.”

  “Phoebe has a good eye.”

  Tamara gives me the letters and I fish a pen out of my purse. When I’m through signing them and she seals the envelopes, I review the things she needs to remember to do — post the letters, pack her suitcase and be ready to come over on the morning of the 2nd, take my CAA card and pick up the maps we’ll need.

  “When you’re at my place, I’ll get you to phone the Lodge and ask some little question — maybe something about my medications — just to get them properly lulled.”

  Two of the nurses who have been out for a smoke get up from a table across the patio and head back into the Triple S. In my purse is the flask of brandy Eddie got me. I slip it out along with one of the little paper cups from the washroom dispenser.

  “I feel like celebrating,” I say. “You don’t drink, do you, Tamara?”

  “I’ve given it up.” She gives me one of her chippy smiles.

  The Courvoisier tastes like liquid fire. “There’s a soda pop machine inside if you’d like something.”

  The caramel latte has filled her up, she declares. She runs her fingers through her hair. For once it isn’t sprayed purple or magenta or green. It’s reddish brown and has a bit of curl to it.

  “I like your hair,” I say. “It looks...well, normal. Is auburn your true color?”

  “The real me.” She smiles her phony smile. She’s anxious to be on her way, I can tell. I get her to take me across to the dining room since it’s almost time for dinner. She waves the letters at me as she heads out the door.

  Mrs. Gollywatchit is burbling around the dining lounge. Must be picking up some overtime.

  “Jean! So nice to see you’re well enough to be taking your meals with us again.” As she pulls out a chair and sits down, she gives my shoulder a pat. “I think that Stanley Merkin girl has given you a whole new lease on life.”

  “You really think so?”

  “And you get to access more of the special programs. Today we have the Dixie Belles and Beaus.”

  She’s not kidding. A band is setting up in the corner where an old out-of-tune upright piano is always parked. By the time Mrs. Gollything gets up and moves to another table, an accordion and a banjo and a couple of sopranos who should have given up singing forty years ago are urging everyone in the Rancho Cafe to “roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.”

  It’s a worthwhile thought, I decide. Roll them out. The crazy days — I’m ready. Not even the Triple S meatloaf with gooey mashed potatoes and flavorleached peas can squelch that little trickle of excitement. I don’t care if it may only be a residual glow from the Courvoisier.

  15

  With school out and Shirl and the gremlins at the daycare, there are times when I feel like phoning the Wrinkle Queen just to talk to someone
. How’s that for desperation?

  Herb and Shirl said they’d keep an eye out for odd jobs for me and I did get some hours helping in the kitchen where Shirl works, and babysitting Herb’s boss’s kids for a couple of weekends. They made Lizzie and Lyle look like angels.

  But most days I’m home alone — all day — with no one arguing about what to watch on TV. Herb’s satellite dish, tilted up on the roof, gets about a thousand channels. On Monday, his day off, he hangs onto the remote like it’s a lifeline, cruising from one sports channel to the next.

  “That’s interesting, Herb, watching golf,” I say. “Sort of like watching grass grow.”

  But we make a deal. I make him lunch — a grilled cheese sandwich or maybe a bowl of soup — and he agrees to take an hour off from his sports watch to give me a driving lesson after lunch.

  On that last Monday before blast off I ask him, “You want fries or salad with that?” I use a voice like the waitress at Humpty’s.

  “Fries,” he sighs. “But don’t tell Shirl.”

  “Our secret,” I tell him.

  During my driving lesson, he has me try out a traffic circle. In my hurry to take advantage of an opening in traffic, I rub the car’s back wheel against the curb.

  “Take it easy,” Herb says. “We’d like a little rubber left on that tire.”

  But I parallel park twice with no problems.

  The letter comes on Wednesday, in with utility bills and a fat envelope of stuff from Reader’s Digest. It looks funny sitting there on the hall bureau. I think of the times I had to type it — three before I got it perfect — and Miss Barclay’s old fingers with their bright red nail polish carefully forging Byron’s signature. And then the letter going to the big downtown post office where the stamp gets canceled and it’s sorted (by people? machines?), and then coming all the way back here. In a way, it seems like the post office is one of our partners in crime.

  “Tamara!” Shirl nearly explodes with excitement when she reads it. “I think you might have a job for August — at least for part of August.”

  “What do you mean?” I pause from helping Lizzie mix up a batch of Kool-Aid.