A few minutes later the sheriff comes out with a sobbing, wild-eyed, hairless Caroline. He puts her in the car and speeds away.
My mother comes out with her arm around Mrs. Cavenaugh, who is stiff as a board. “Jane, we’re going back to Ginny’s house. Ginny isn’t here. The sheriff is going to take Caroline to a hospital.”
“Where’s Ginny?” I ask stupidly.
“Shhh,” says my mother. “I’ll tell you about it when we get Ginny’s mother home. The sheriff is going to meet us there in a bit.”
When we get to Ginny’s house her mom falls crying into the arms of her dad, who has been waiting by the phone in case Ginny or someone else calls. But no one has.
My mother takes me onto the front steps and explains that H.K. has eloped with one of his graduate students and left Caroline a note. Caroline has been living alone for days since it happened and they found her medication thrown all over the floor along with the hair she shaved off her head and two bags of spilled groceries, most of which were lemons. She had bought six dozen lemons.
“Caroline doesn’t know anything about Ginny. She doesn’t even seem to know who she is. She wouldn’t really be too aware of much since she stopped taking her pills.”
“But then where is Ginny?” I say.
“We don’t know,” says my mother.
We go back inside. She makes Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh tea and they thank her but they don’t pick up the cups.
Eventually the sheriff comes and we all sit in the living room while Ginny’s mom shreds Kleenex and I try to think where in the world Ginny could have gone or how someone could have gotten ahold of her. Mr. Cavenaugh gets up and paces. Then he sits back down close to the phone. The sheriff has called in help but for now his job is to wait with the Cavenaughs. Mrs. Cavenaugh’s eyes look like glass. My hands have cold sweat on them. My mother keeps getting up and making more tea and throwing out the old. Then the phone rings. Everyone in the room jumps.
Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh both leap on the phone, grabbing it so violently that I think they are going to fight over it, but Mr. Cavenaugh lets Mrs. Cavenaugh answer.
“Oh thank God. Oh thank God,” says Mrs. Cavenaugh over and over. “When did you get her? Is she okay? Yes. Yes. We’ll be there soon.”
My mother pulls my sleeve and we tiptoe outside to sit on the steps. Wherever Ginny is, she is obviously okay.
“This has been a terrible day,” says my mother, finally dropping her head into her hands.
I wonder how much of it has to do with H.K. eloping or if she has even had time to digest this yet.
At last the sheriff comes out on the porch and tells us that Ginny used the money from her grandmother to buy a bus ticket to New York early this morning. When she got to the Port Authority terminal, she called her aunt Lucy, who lives there, to come get her. And as soon as her aunt had her safely in tow and found out she hadn’t told her parents, she called them.
The sheriff shakes his head. “I don’t know what she was thinking but I suppose I never will. That’s one of the things I never get used to on this job, not finding out the ends of stories if they end well. Oh well, at least this one did end well. Just as I said, girls your age apt to do silly things. Can I give you folks a lift somewhere?”
Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh are off to New York City to pick up Ginny and bring her home.
“Could you give us a ride to Nellie Phipps’s house?” asks my mother. “Is that where Nellie was taking the children, Jane?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just left them with her. She’s probably there or still at the church.”
But we go to both places and they aren’t at either and Nellie’s car is gone.
“Darn it all,” I say. “She must have taken them with her to deliver Bibles. I told her I’d be back in an hour.” I am unbelievably tired suddenly and just want everyone together and home before someone else disappears.
“Oh well, at least you know where they are and that they’ll be safe with Nellie. She’s no Caroline. What was Caroline thinking? My, my,” clucks the sheriff. “If I were Mr. Thomson I’d be concerned about that woman.”
“I’d be more concerned about Henry. What was he thinking, leaving Caroline there all alone with just a note?” says my mother.
“I guess she just snapped,” says the sheriff.
“Or he did,” says my mother as we drive back to the parking lot on the beach.
“There was some talk, you know, that you were his latest girlfriend,” says the sheriff. I wonder if they have forgotten that I am in the backseat.
“I imagine he encouraged that so he could elope with this student without Caroline interfering,” says my mother. “He certainly never let on to me that he was going to get married. But then we didn’t really have such intimate conversations. We mostly just talked of this and that. This and that.”
The sheriff stops the car by the beach and we get out and thank him.
“Come on,” says my mother to me after he has pulled away. “We may as well go home and have some lunch and wait for Nellie to return the children.”
But hours pass and by suppertime Maya and Max and Hershel still haven’t shown up and my mother is getting antsy.
“Maybe she took them home with her and is waiting for us to collect them?” she says. “Did you iron out any plans when you asked her to watch them?”
“No, I just said I’d get them in an hour.”
“Could you run to her house, Jane, and see if they’re all back? It’s getting late.”
So I run across the sand and through town and when I get to Nellie’s house her car is in the drive and I think, Thank goodness, let this day be over. I knock on the door and when she appears I hear she is watching television and I ask for Maya and Hershel and Max and she says, “Well, I don’t have them, child.”
“Where are they?” I ask.
“I gave them to Mrs. Martin as soon as you took off. She does babysitting. I don’t. I don’t know what you thought you were doing leaving them with me.”
“Mrs. Martin?” I say.
“You know Mrs. Martin. She babysits. Your mother used to hire her when you were little.”
I stand openmouthed. I had forgotten Mrs. Martin until I saw her name in Mr. Fordyce’s book. Now here she is again. The way you learn a new word and then suddenly see it everywhere.
“Go on, child. They’re probably at her house right now.”
“Probably? Miss Phipps! And I don’t even know where she lives,” I say, exasperated. It is becoming twilight. I am exhausted. I don’t want to have to go searching for someone’s house.
Nellie looks up the address, writes it down, hands it to me and then closes the door.
I have to find Mulberry Street and when I do finally get to the right house and Mrs. Martin opens the door, there are Hershel and Max and Maya all looking very unhappy.
“Oh my goodness, little Jane Fielding. I used to sit with you when you were about Max’s age and then with your brothers and sister too as they came along. I just love babies but my, they can be work. Your poor mother really needed to get out of the house in those days.”
I just stare at her.
“That will be six hours at seven dollars an hour for forty-two dollars. Do you need a receipt?” asks Mrs. Martin.
I can’t say anything but it doesn’t seem to bother her.
“Did your mother forget to send money with you?” she asks, looking down at me understandingly. She seems like a nice woman but this is so much money.
“Yes,” I say, answering her money question the easiest way.
“Look at how you’ve all grown. I bet you don’t remember me, do you, dear?”
I want to snap, How could I remember, I was Max’s age and asleep. I am becoming dangerously frayed.
“Never mind. I’ll settle up with your mother when I see her next,” she says, and I am so stunned that I don’t even say thank you. I just take Maya and Hershel and Max and leave.
“I want to go home,”
says Max over and over.
“We are going home,” I reply over and over. I don’t mind repeating the same thing. I can do it automatically without paying them much attention because now that I finally have the children back, the enormity of what Nellie has done, or rather not done, hits me and I am seething.
I have been so willing to accept that everything Nellie does must be for good purpose because she is so obsessed with positive and negative energy. I wanted to believe that she knew more than me. That she was the way to find something. I want to think it’s okay that she wouldn’t babysit; that she has evolved reasons. But it isn’t okay.
I have delivered Bibles with Nellie. I have walked around lakes looking for transparent poodles and encouraged her faith healing and dreamt up gathering places. I have looked up to her as knowing about moving energy and the working of the universe. I have encouraged her belief in her healing hands when others wouldn’t. I have tried to take her word for it against my own good sense and judgment. I thought she was my friend.
But now I realize that Nellie has no interest in me. She is too busy chasing the divine. How can a person, if she is so evolved, ignore a simple request from someone really in need? How can she heal people with her hands if she can’t even watch three children for an hour during a crisis? This isn’t a friend, I think. This isn’t a holy person. This isn’t even someone who is very nice. This is just someone who wants some spiritual excitement and a warm body along to believe in her.
I know I will never deliver Bibles with Nellie again.
Everyone Reappears
My Thirteenth Adventure
It is three days later and Ginny has returned from New York. She does not have to go to soccer camp this week. I think her mother has given up that idea. We are lying on the beach watching the Gourd children and laughing at poor Dr. Callahan. Every summer we watch him try to take his vacation and lie on the beach and read and relax but because people needing medical advice now must go all the way to Lincoln, they come sniffling and coughing with towels, which they put down suspiciously close to his, and before long he is working again.
“I don’t know why he just doesn’t vacation somewhere else. Aren’t doctors rich?” asks Ginny.
“Maybe he likes it,” I say. “Maybe he is one of those people who can’t really take time off.”
Ginny frowns and looks out at the ocean. “I think I will be one of those people,” she says. “I’m not really happy unless I’m designing clothes or making them.”
Ginny has told me what happened. Her mother found the vintage clothes under the bed after all. It turns out that she does vacuum under beds from time to time. When Ginny got home Saturday from our house and reached under the bed to take out the clothes, they were gone. Her mother had hauled them to the dump with a load of other things. And she wouldn’t take Ginny there to retrieve them. And neither would her father. Her parents said the clothes would be covered with garbage and rats.
“I remembered what you said about people’s fires. I knew my mother didn’t care about mine but I never thought she would try to extinguish it. Things will never be the same between us after this,” says Ginny.
“But what were you going to do in New York?” I asked.
“I didn’t think that part through. I was just so mad. I decided not to wait any longer. Just to go. I had this vague plan that my aunt Lucy would let me live with her.”
“I am done with Nellie Phipps the way you are done with your mother but while I was with her she claimed to have healed Willie Mae.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” scoffs Ginny.
“There’s no way of knowing for sure,” I say.
“Hey, listen, I don’t believe it for a second but if you do, what are we doing still babysitting the Gourds? We have two weeks of vacation left,” says Ginny.
“We have no proof we can give Mrs. Gourd that Willie Mae won’t grow up damaged from the Bible I dropped. And as long as we have no proof she could still sue.”
“How do we know there is no way to get proof? Maybe there are tests the doctors can give Willie Mae.”
“Don’t you think Mrs. Gourd would have thought of that already?”
“Mrs. Gourd? Are you kidding? Feh. She’d probably never even ask about such tests. But we can. Dr. Callahan is right here.”
“He won’t know,” I said.
“He might.”
And before I can say anything Ginny has plopped herself right next to him. “Dr. Callahan,” she says in a loud voice. His eyes are shut. I think he is pretending to be asleep. “Dr. Callahan! Are there any tests you can give Willie Mae to find out if he’s going to be developmentally challenged from the Bible that got dropped on his head?”
Dr. Callahan sits up and frowns at her. “What are you nattering about?” he asks, putting a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun and squinting at her.
“Don’t you remember at the beginning of the summer when Jane dropped a Bible on Willie Mae’s head? Mrs. Gourd came out of the checkup with Willie Mae and you told Jane that Mrs. Gourd could sue her for it? He had a bump and a bruise on his forehead?”
“I remember that checkup. Yes. Well, there’s no damage, for heaven’s sake. And he didn’t get the bump from some Bible. He got it when I asked Mrs. Gourd to hand me my stethoscope and she dropped it on Willie Mae’s head. Thirty years of practice and I’ve never had a mother drop something on her own baby’s head. Remarkable.”
I sit there like stone.
“He didn’t come in with the bump?” asks Ginny, turning her head to look at me.
“No, he came in just fine. He left with a big black-and-blue mark and a bump, but again, parents are lucky that babies are made of rubber. Most of the things that happen to them bounce right off. And certainly no one is going to be developmentally challenged from a little bruise like that. Particularly on that part of the skull. Skulls are interesting. Head injuries are interesting. Hit the skull in this place and it cracks like an eggshell and the person bleeds into the brain and it’s all over. Hit them an inch to the right and there’s no damage to the skull at all. As I say, interesting. But even if she’d dropped the stethoscope on a fragile part of the skull, she didn’t drop it hard enough to do anything but make a nice dramatic goose egg, which, although stunningly purple, was nothing more than a little boo-boo, really. Now can you please move? You’re in my sun.”
All those nights of twisting in bed, worried. My whole ruined life. It is like waking from a bad dream. At first I am elated.
Then Ginny, who does not look elated, only mad, thanks Dr. Callahan, returns to me and says, “We’ve been had.”
We sit there quietly for a long time.
Ginny wants to march into the Bluebird Café right now and leave the children there but I don’t want any more conflict or confrontations or dramatic situations so I get her to agree to wait until it is time to hand the children over in the parking lot.
By the time Mrs. Gourd arrives I am angry too. Nellie, Madame Crenshaw, Mrs. Gourd, that bogus channeler with her great destinies and evolved people. My own stupidity at ever believing any of them. I will believe in no one ever again. What was the purple circle of light? Mrs. McCarthy? Coincidence? Wanting to believe? I will believe in nothing, then.
“We know what really happened,” says Ginny, holding the baby carrier tightly so Mrs. Gourd can’t get away. “Dr. Callahan told us that you dropped a stethoscope on Willie Mae’s head.”
“He’s wrong,” says Mrs. Gourd quickly.
“Well, shall we all go over and ask him?” asks Ginny.
I don’t think I could talk to a grown-up like this but Ginny is in some ways already grown up.
“What if I did? More fools you,” says Mrs. Gourd, grabbing at the baby carrier. “Anyhow, you can’t prove nothing.”
“Well, here’s your perfectly fine baby back,” says Ginny, handing over Willie Mae. “Nobody’s going to babysit for you anymore.”
“Like I can’t figure that one out,” says M
rs. Gourd, and walks away. No apology. Nothing.
Ginny and I stand in the parking lot and watch them until they disappear. We sit on a cement divider. Gulls swoop in a lavender light as the sun relaxes into the dinner hour. Ginny finally gets up and says she’d better go home and I sit for a few minutes longer when Ned’s car pulls into the parking lot.
“NED!” I say in surprise.
“Fancy meeting you here, Bibles!” says Ned, unloading groceries.
“Never call me that again,” I say.
“Come on, help me carry this stuff. I would have called your mother but—”
“No phone,” I say.
“We’re having a real blowout tonight. Champagne. Two kinds of pop. Lamb chops! Because I got a job.”
When we get to the house he tells us the whole story. My mother is astonished. But it turns out the job isn’t here in town or even in Massachusetts. The job is in Saskatchewan teaching French. It’s a good full-time position, the type of job Ned has never held before, and he has even bought a house. He says the town needs a French teacher so badly that it is willing to assume the mortgage until Ned can pay back the down payment.
“It’s a honey of a house,” he says. “Of course, it’s not very big. It’s just kind of a box. Not a lot of personality. But it has three bedrooms. The town’s got a lot of empty houses—that’s why the school board got it so cheap. I have some snapshots in the car. I’ll go get them.”
He heads back to the parking lot. Maya and Max and Hershel go with him. They are all feeding potato chips to the gulls as they head down the beach.
My mother begins to get dinner ready. I am wondering if Ned actually thinks my mother would ever leave this house and move to Saskatchewan and I am thinking that I feel sorry for him and the disappointment he will have. Suddenly there is a tug on my neck and I am choking. I am too startled to cry out and then I smell something foul as a strong hairy arm pulls me backward. For some reason it is all this coarse, curly hair that scares me the most. There is something wrong about all this coarse, smelly hair. I cannot call out. I cannot move. I can’t even register exactly what is happening. I blink rapidly. I see my mother coming out of the house, her eyes enormous, running to me, and I want to go to her but the arm tightens and a voice drawls, “Hold it right there, Mizz Fielding, it is Mizzzzz Fielding, isn’t it?”
My One Hundred Adventures Page 14