by Greg Fowler
‘So, tell m…me a story,’ said Eddy when his sandwich and his patience finally ran out.
‘Well, it’s sort of good and bad news…but mostly good news.’ Reagan had to add that last bit quick, before Eddy’s face fell all the way to the ground. ‘Dad still hasn’t got a job but Mum has.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yep. Dad’s gonna keep looking but the place where Mum worked a few years ago, they said she can have her old job back.’
‘So y…your Dad won’t work b…but your Mum will?’
‘Seems so.’
‘And you won’t b..be moving away?’
‘Nope.’
‘I th…thought you s…said you had some good news.’
Reagan reached around before Eddy could adjust and thumped him hard on the arm. It hurt too but Eddy couldn’t help but laugh. Reagan thumped him again, right on that same spot and while Eddy knew it was going to come up in a hefty bruise he wouldn’t have it any other way. Not for a million dollars.
26. Q AND A
Eddy had been getting a little worried about Mrs Elsdon. She hadn’t been for her daily constitutional walk for a couple of days now and he was getting concerned that he’d really stepped over the line.
Under different circumstances he would’ve paid her a visit, or at least have got Reagan to check on her, but Mr Tree persuaded him otherwise. Not that Mr Tree came right out and said it of course. It was in the rhythm of the vibrations. Eddy had come to read them like a blind person reads brail and as far as he could tell, he just had to sit tight. It wasn’t easy though. God forbid she’d gone and died in that lonely house of hers.
So, when he saw her slip out of the front door on a crispy Thursday morning, he breathed a sigh of relief.
The second thing he noticed was that she didn’t keep with her usual routine. Instead of turning left and circling the cul de sac first, she crossed the road and headed straight for his place, her walking stick beating faster than he could ever remember. She was a lady with a purpose.
Eddy considered his options but at the end of the day he stayed right where he was. He’d started this thing, now he had to see it through.
Click, clack, click, clack.
Only a couple of houses down from Eddy’s, Mrs Elsdon looked up and spotted him in the window. Satisfied she’d hooked her fish she slowed down a bit and gave her aching hip a brief respite. It appeared she had some options to consider as well.
Then, stepping right up to the pavement beneath the window, she looked up and asked him the simplest of questions.
‘How did you know?’
‘I d…don’t know Mrs Elsdon. I j…just did.’ It wasn’t so much a lie as it was a half truth but Eddy still didn’t like leaving the very important factor of Mr Tree out of the equation. She deserved the whole truth but he had no idea how to tackle that weird and wonderful version of reality.
‘I don’t really know what to say. I mean, this whole thing…it scares me and at the same time I feel blessed.’
I know how you feel Mrs Elsdon. I know how you feel.
‘T…tell me about the g…green stone Mrs Elsdon.’
The old lady measured him, checking to see whether he wasn’t playing games with her.
‘The green stone. You know, I haven’t thought about the green stone in a long, long time. We called it the green stone because of all the moss on it. It sits in the shade down the end of our garden and it was covered in the stuff when we first moved into the place.’ Mrs Elsdon took a moment to stretch and made a grimace as she did it. ‘Do you mind if I sit Eddy? My back’s giving me the willies at the moment.’
‘There’s nowhere t..to sit.’
‘You know what…just here on your front lawn’ll do just fine.’
Eddy felt bad about watching this lovely old lady lower herself down on his front lawn. He should at least be going down there and offering her a chair from inside, if not actually inviting her in. But between him and her lay a Grandma in waiting. As it was, all hell would break lose if Grandma Daisy stumbled on this scene. Hopefully she was tucked away in the back room down stairs watching that TV thing of hers.
When Mrs Elsdon had settled in, making sure her legs were tucked away all lady like, she started back in where she’d left off.
‘It took me a good while to remember how it began. It was our key stone. We used to place the spare key under there in case we lost one of ours or we’d been locked out.’ She took a second or two to smile at her new wealth of memories. ‘I used it too, let me tell you. I was forever leaving the house without the key. Ben used to tease me about it but in the end it worked out to be a good thing. You see Eddy, it happened so often it got to the point where Ben used to leave little notes for me under the green stone…all wrapped in a plastic bag with the key in it. At first it was a great big joke for him. You know, he’d write things like ‘how’s the Alzheimer’s?’ and silly stuff like that.’
‘After a while though…many, many years we’re talking about here, the notes sort of changed. They went from silly little jokes to…’ Mrs Elsdon paused to chuckle, ‘to love notes I guess you could say. Things like poems and other things just to let me know he still loved me. Always and forever he’d sign them off. Always and forever. They were beautiful Eddy and whenever I found one they’d make my day…my week even. He wouldn’t stow them there all the time though. He was cheeky like that. But every once in a while I’d check and feel like I’d hit the lottery.’
‘When he got sick though…well, he couldn’t do it anymore could he. So I just figured that was it.’ Mrs Elsdon couldn’t smile anymore so she stopped trying. ‘He was at the hospital most of the time.’ Now a tear track slipped down her face and watered the sleeve of her blouse. ‘At the very end he came home. The doctors couldn’t do anything for him. So I set up a bed for him in the lounge where he could watch TV and receive friends and family… you know, be comfortable.’
‘I had no reason to check, Eddy. All these years, how was I to know? How he did it, I have no idea. He had absolutely no energy and that’s the thing. He had the opportunity but no energy.’
‘The only thing I can think of is when I popped out for a couple of groceries or something…he must’ve dragged that whole IV unit out to the back yard with him.’
‘And the whole time he didn’t say a damned thing. I guess he just figured I’d find it sooner rather than later.’
Reaching into the very same handbag she’d pulled Eddy’s card out of a few days earlier, she dragged out a small plastic bag. Then, struggling a bit with her trembling fingers, she fished around inside it and came back out with a simple piece of note paper. There was no way Eddy could see what was written on it but as Mrs Elsdon unfolded it on her lap he did spy the tell tale squiggles of handwriting.
‘Do you want me to read it to you Eddy?’
‘N…no Mrs Elsdon. That’s between y…you and Mr Elsdon.’
‘It’s beautiful Eddy,’ cried the gentle lady on his front lawn. ‘Of all the things he ever wrote me, this is the most beautiful.’
‘I know.’
Mrs Elsdon refolded her precious note and tucked it back away in its plastic bag. Confident it was safe and sound she grabbed hold of her walking stick and put it to the test as she used it to leverage her old bones back up to a standing position.
‘You never did tell me how you knew…but don’t worry, I’m not going to ask again. I’ve been around long enough and I think I know a miracle when I see it. We’ll leave it at that shall we?’
‘I think s..so Mrs Elsdon.’
‘Thank you Eddy. I know that’s just words but I don’t know how I can ever repay you for what you’ve done. You’re a very special boy and you’ve made me warm again. This,’ she said, holding up the plastic bag, ‘this is his arms, this is his hug.’
‘He l…loves you Mrs Elsdon.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘I don’t know f..for certain…but I think s…so.’
Eddy wasn’t sure how she’d react
to that but, in the end, he needn’t have worried. She cast her gaze higher than Eddy and regarded the deep blue heavens above them. And she smiled a happy, contented smile.
‘Would you mind if I come back and see you again? Just for a friendly chat.’
‘I’d l…like that Mrs Elsdon. W…we can be friends.’
27. THE PIECES IN BETWEEN
The next few weeks saw autumn surrender to winter. Eddy didn’t much care for winter. It wasn’t so much the cold thing. Well, it was in a way. Winter meant that the jam sandwich committee met on a less regular basis.
That didn’t stop window to window rendezvous’ though. At Eddy’s request, Reagan had got into sharing her school text books with him. A few of them were all gobbledegook to him, especially the ones that had letters as numbers. He could still recall the days when letters as letters were hard enough without confusing the situation even more. But there were other books that sort of ‘clicked’. And that ‘click’, that wonderful experience of understanding something new, was bliss.
More often than not he’d be hassling Reagan about one text book question or another but, without exception, she always put down whatever it was she was doing and tried to help him out. She was good that way. And, on a very, very, very odd occasion, the favour went back the other way. When that happened, and Eddy could indeed answer her question, he was over the moon. He did have his suspicions though. Maybe she was feeding him a couple of easy ones just to make his day. She was good that way as well.
One thing Eddy did notice was that Reagan was talking a lot more about other boys these days. It used to be just girly things or, if boys did come into the picture, about how silly they were. Now it was different. She’d rank some of the boys in her class by order of who she liked the most. Some guy called Kevin was her flavour of the day some days, then it was Michael on others. Eddy always listened intently and nodded in the right places but this really wasn’t his subject matter. Put it this way, he certainly didn’t have the answers to those questions.
But even he had to admit, there was a little more to his ambivalence than that. Deep down inside, he sort of wished his name was on that list of hers. And not in the minor placings either.
Sometimes he daydreamed about what he’d write if the two of them had their equivalent of Mr and Mrs Elsdon’s green stone. Something really, really nice, he knew that, but at the same time he felt pretty certain it would never happen. She could never be interested in him in that way. He wasn’t her sort. These Kevin’s and Michael’s all sounded so strong, fast and smart. Eddy knew he couldn’t compete with that.
And even if he did feel he was in the race, how on earth would he get the right words down. There was no way he could describe the way he felt about this incredible girl in the window opposite him. A Stupid Boy like him just couldn’t do her justice.
Her wonderful friendship would have to do. It would more than do. She wasn’t his only friend anymore but she was without doubt the best friend a boy like him could ever have. In those many lonely hours when Reagan was off at school, Eddy would ponder this. Without Reagan Crowe in his life, the world would be a much darker place. His heart knew that the same way his stomach knew when it was hungry.
Mrs Crowe had set about doing what she said she would. She found her ‘will’ and she found her ‘way’.
Inside two weeks of Mr Crowe losing his job she was all dressed up and on her way to the train station for her first day back at the old job. Reagan said she worked at a lawyer’s office way up on one of the top floors of a big office building. Eddy had seen pictures of tall buildings in his books and when he waved to Mrs Crowe as she wandered by early every morning, he wondered upon the marvellous views she must have from way up high. From his own front window he could see as far as the houses behind the houses across the street…but from thirty floors up, wow…you could probably see half the world from up there.
He’d actually asked Mrs Crowe about it once. Just like that. ‘Mrs Crowe, can y…you see h..half the world from your office w…window?’ She’d laughed at that and told him that she wished she could. But she did qualify her answer. If she went over to one of the windows she could see right across the suburbs and all the way to the ocean.
The Ocean.
Eddy hadn’t even known they were anywhere near an ocean and the thought of that great big expanse of water rolling up against the shore tugged at him like the tide. What a sight it must be, to stand on the beach and look across the vastness of blue water. No houses, no bedrooms, no Grandma Daisy’s.
Mr Crowe was busy trying to find a new job but as the season ebbed and changed he didn’t seem to have any luck. At first he’d been keen as mustard from what Eddy could tell. Back then, pretty much as soon as he’d shipped Reagan off to school, he’d be off to the train station as well, all fancied up in his suit and tie. But as time went by he sort of ran out of steam. Instead of commuting into the city every day, it’d be two or three times a week. Then it reduced to one or two days a week…and then, more recently… pretty much never. If he did leave the house these days he certainly wasn’t in the business of finding a job. Not from Eddy’s perspective anyway. You don’t get picked for fancy jobs when all you’re wearing is track pants and an old football top. To add to the picture, Mr Crowe also appeared to be growing a beard. Not a tidy one though. His one was all scraggy and Reagan had told him it was all scratchy too.
Mrs Elsdon worked hard on doing exactly what she said she would. Half way through her daily bouts of exercise she’d pull up below Eddy’s window and have a good old chinwag. It usually started off like any other conversation. Your ‘how’s it going’ and ‘a bit chilly isn’t it’ type stuff, but inevitably she always managed to swing it in the direction of Mr Elsdon, and Eddy didn’t mind that one bit.
It was obvious she’d found a connection with Eddy that she couldn’t find with anyone else and while it was a different sort of satisfaction, Eddy got as much out of it as she did. If it weren’t for the cold wind (Eddy knew now that it came in off the ocean) playing havoc with her old bones, she’d stand there for hours regaling him with stories of the ‘good old days’. Things like how she and Mr Elsdon had met at the post office when she’d needed an extra couple of pennies for a stamp. Or how he made the best damned pancakes on this side of the city…topped off with a dose of lemon and sugar.
And they were great stories, no question about it but as she released each one Eddy saw a sense of desire rise in her eyes. An unsaid need to ask him if there was anything else he could tell her, anything at all that might take her hand and walk her back to the glorious past. Were there any more messages? Not under the green stone of course. That one had been taken care of. But was there something more that this wonderful, special boy had access to?
It said something about Mrs Elsdon that she was so desperate to ask this question but never did. And it was for that very reason that Eddy tried as best he could for her.
In between Reagan trudging out the front door and down the street in her school uniform and Mrs Elsdon click clacking a reverse path toward him, he’d sit down and spend time with Mr Tree. Mr Tree who wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down whatsoever. In those weeks where the days got shorter and the nights longer, his beloved tree had spread even further. Not content with finding purchase across the walls, it had begun to sprout new shoots across the ceiling. Given time, Eddy reckoned, his entire bedroom would be like a treehouse.
The other thing he noticed was that, while the trees outside were setting themselves for their annual hibernation, his tree was doing anything but. In fact it was going gangbusters. The leaves, both inside and outside his side window, were as vivaciously green as ever and it wasn’t entirely unusual for people walking by to stop and have a look. They couldn’t really see what was going on inside Eddy’s bedroom, but the effervescent growth on the outside portion of Mr Tree stood out like the bookmark of summer caught up in the pages of winter.
And it made Eddy proud.
Corre
ction, proud and confident.
These passersby (some of them he knew and some of them he didn’t) would stop in front of his house and marvel at how this tree was cheating the seasons. And there, in the window above them, would be Eddy, smiling like a father.
Some of these people would spot him up there and ask him all sorts of questions. What did they do to make their tree so wonderful? Was it always like that? At first Eddy had been a bit shy about answering them but as time and opportunity rolled on he warmed up to the task. Most people were friendly enough and his confidence was a reflection of that. But at the same time it wasn’t unusual for him to get that time honoured, human nature response, the one where people recognised he looked funny, he spoke funny and he wasn’t quite ‘normal’. There were very few times they were nasty about it but, bottom line, they didn’t know how to deal with it. They’d just smile this pitiful smile and wander away like he wasn’t there, wishing like hell they hadn’t stopped in the first place. Okay, so they didn’t come out and say that, but Eddy had seen it all in his short lifetime and he knew the message between the lines.
There was another thing about Mr Tree too. The more it grew, the stronger Eddy felt those sensations coursing through it. The vibrations and the colours themselves didn’t get stronger…it was more to do with a refinement of the sensations, a maturing of the message.
Mr and Mrs Elsdon’s green stone had been the first signpost of that but as he shared the hours with his magical companion, more information started forming in his mind.
He didn’t need to hear the creak on the stairs anymore. He seemed to know that Grandma Daisy intended to hit the stairs even before her foot touched the bottom step.
He didn’t need to worry about being caught out by Bert/Nathan anymore because he could feel the boy’s presence approaching like a shark in the sea.
The newest extension to this mystical armoury was his dawning ability to look at people and know certain things about them. Things they were thinking. Things they had done. Things they wished they had done. And, most unnerving of all, connections to them from other places. All Eddy knew of these ‘other places’ was that they weren’t places you could get up and go and visit. They were places in between places. They were places with a vibration all of their own. Again, Mr and Mrs Elsdon took the first place honours as far as this new ability was concerned.