by Tricia Dower
“The big hand is on the one and the little hand is on the seven,” he says.
“Thank you, pumpkin.” Less than an hour to get him fed and dressed. She rises slowly like a sleepwalker and squints in his direction. He was in PJs when she tucked him into bed last night. He’s naked now before the calendar they tacked up yesterday on the wall by the kitchen.
“When will we go to the apple place?”
“When the big hand is on the eleven and the little hand is on the eight.”
“How long will we stay there?” Tavis isn’t a go-with-the-flow kind of kid. He prefers an itinerary. In her dream, he was a pale brown fawn with sweet little antlers. She’d given him permission to romp in a field. You’re free. Go. Do your deer thing. But muffled voices around her said, “Are you crazy?” Feeling chastised and defeated, she went after him.
“I’ll come for you when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the five. Daycare has a clock so you’ll be able to see when that is.”
He’s pasted an apple sticker on each day he’ll be at Tree House Kids, starting with today. She wasn’t able to find stickers with trees or tree houses, has printed DADDY under the apple on Friday’s square, Saturday, Sunday and the following Monday. Ron will pick up Tavis each Friday and drop him back off at daycare in time for lunch on Monday. She’s given Irene a password to insist on if anyone else claims permission to take him. You can’t be too careful.
“Rice Krispies or oatmeal?”
“Snap, crackle, pop!”
She pours out a bowl and waits until the cereal speaks to him. Gets into navy bellbottoms, a red and white striped T-shirt. In Prairie Fire, she’d be brewing a pot of Folgers for parishioners “just stopping by” the middle-of-nowhere parsonage. She left the percolator behind.
They take the stairs to the first floor. Tavis bounces step-by-step on his bottom, hasn’t done that since he was a toddler. Angel opens her door almost at Lin’s knock. She’s all business in black heels and sage suit, her freckles under makeup, her hair tamed with tortoiseshell combs.
“No nurse’s uniform?” Lin asks.
“Only on Halloween. You look like a Russian sailor. A favorite past life, I bet.”
“I’d rather have been Pavlova or Catherine the Great.”
“Maybe you were.”
Having a bunch of chances to get it right appeals to Lin, although that also means more chances to screw up. Ron gave a sermon on reincarnation last year, labeling it “misguided doctrine.” Resurrection as proven by the risen Christ, he claimed, is what we can count on after we die. He spoke of past lives as the “latest ancient fad.” She wonders now why he thought one doctrine taken on faith was a valid argument against another.
The parking lot outside their building has already emptied out. Traffic on the boulevard behind the garages makes a rhythmic ocean wave sound that brings back a shipwrecked game Lin played as a kid. Angel holds Matty’s hand and she Tavis’s, the four of them side-by-side under a cloudless sky. Brazen summertime is taking its time to leave.
“Supposed to get up to seventy-six today,” Lin says, eyeing Anthony’s brown cords and long-sleeved tan shirt. He swings a Star Trek lunch box twenty paces ahead. Tavis and Matty are dressed for the heat to come.
“I know. I told him he’d be sweating by noon but Charles sent the outfit and number one son couldn’t wait to show it off at school. It seems zero else he owns is cool. Holy Toledo, only in first grade and having to be cool already.”
“Charles sounds like a generous guy.”
“Complementary scripts, sweetie. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
That word script again. “How about Wednesday? Can you and the boys come for dinner?” Her voice wavers. What if they don’t like what she cooks or she and Angel run out of conversation?
“I do believe our dance card is open.”
“Macaroni and cheese okay?”
“The Alfredssons will be yours forever.”
Lin spots Lenny in the wide shadow of the daycare building, propped against the wall, arms folded, acting nonchalant in Easy Rider sunglasses. She says, “What’s he doing there? He gives me the creeps.”
Angel waves to him. “Lenny? He fancies himself a Lothario but he’s harmless.”
The floor dips and creaks as they enter Tree House Kids. Matty and Anthony bolt for a carpeted playroom to the left, behind a wall of crate-sized cubicles labeled with names. A toddler staggers around like a drunk. Other kids curl up in purple beanbag chairs, sucking their thumbs. “The holding pen,” Angel says. “They wait here until everyone in their group is dumped off. Anthony stays until the school bus roars in.” Matty flops onto a pillow in front of the TV where a red-jacketed Captain Kangaroo holds court. Anthony attacks a pile of Lincoln Logs. Tavis barnacles himself to Lin’s side.
“You’ll have a blast, Tavis,” Angel says. She kisses her fingers, touches them to his head.
Lin and Tavis press on to the manager’s office straight ahead. The gray-haired, pony-tailed Irene Storm, a tall, strapping woman in a flowered smock, stands outside the office door. “Right on time,” she says. “I appreciate that.” Ron figured her for a smoker. Lin hears empathy in the low voice, reassurance.
“Welcome to Tree House Kids,” Irene says. She leans over and shakes Tavis’s left hand—his right has Lin’s in a death grip. “We allow only fun here. May I give you and Mother the grand tour?” He nods. Lin doubts he knows what a grand tour is, hopes he doesn’t expect some sort of gift. Irene shows them the bathrooms, two playrooms, and a room with a Let’s Eat sign, long low tables, short-legged chairs and children’s artwork on the walls. She leads them back to the entrance and wall of crates.
“Okey doke, my brand new friend, let’s see if you can spot your first name.”
He strides up and down beside the wall, hands behind his back, peering at labels. Parents and children enter, greeting each other and Irene, interrupting him, causing him to lose focus. Lin’s stomach aches for him. What nonsense is this, a test on his first day? At last he points to a label and in his sweet, clear voice sings “T-a-v-i-s” to the tune of “Bingo.”
Irene erupts in surprised laughter. “Excellent spelling and singing. Mother can give me the story behind that bit of learning later. This is your cubby, Tavis, where you’ll stow your jacket or snowsuit and boots, depending on the weather. From time to time, I’ll put notes in it for you to take home to Mother.”
“He calls me Mommy,” Lin says. Irene smiles and gives Lin’s shoulder a lighten-up jab. She introduces Tavis to the dark-haired, dumpling-shaped young woman in charge of his group, the four- and five-year-old Caterpillars. Miss Ellen tells him they’ll construct paper plate tambourines today but first she’ll help him find buried treasure. That proves irresistible. He hugs Lin goodbye and follows Miss Ellen into a playroom. Lin has a private word with Irene about Tavis’s habit of disrobing (“not uncommon, especially in summer,” Irene notes) and referring to himself in the third person (“we’ll work on personal pronouns”). Irene encourages her to visit whenever she can. “Have lunch with us today. It’s always lively.”
“What if he wants to come home with me after?”
“If you’re able to accommodate that, it’s not so bad on the first day. He’ll make friends soon enough and want to stay.”
Lin learns Matty is in a younger playgroup named Polliwogs. Tavis will see him only at communal times. She tells Irene she taught Tavis his name by changing the words to “Bingo.” Softly, self-conscious, she sings: “There was a mommy had a son and Tavis was his name-o, T-a-v-i-s, T-a-v-i-s, T-a-v-i-s and Tavis was his name-o.” When Irene says she’ll try it out on the Polliwogs, Lin feels absurdly honored. She wants to unburden her heart, share her fawn dream with Irene and her fear Tavis will believe she’s abandoned him at Tree House Kids. But nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, someone else’s fears. S
he says, “Please tell Miss Ellen he likes to do puzzles.” As though they’re on Romper Room. Miss Ellen. Really.
Back in her apartment she lurks at the balcony door and stares at the daycare center until the intercom honks. It’s the telephone installer, a young yellow-haired guy in rolled-up jeans, white socks and brown work boots, with a baseball cap and a cocky smile on a Troy Donahue face. His tool belt jangles when he struts across her kitchen floor. She keeps the door open lest he try anything funny, watches for a small, suspicious device as he installs a white wall phone between the clock and the calendar. The FBI tapped the parsonage phone. Why not this one?
Ron calls almost as soon as the installer leaves. Only two days since she’s heard his voice yet she has to pull out a chair from the card table and sit. He knew her number before she did. The account is in his name to avoid a hefty deposit due to her lack of credit. It irks her he’ll receive the bill and a list of calls she’s made. She’s always handled their account. She answers his questions about the move and daycare, asks about yesterday’s sermon.
He says, “I stumbled around in denial all weekend. It seems impossible you could be away. Your presence fills every inch of the parsonage.”
That sucks the air right out of her and she has to hang up.
The call and her reaction to it gnaw at her as she drives to Gamble’s Hardware for a door chain where she finds out she’ll need heavy-duty tape, a drill, a mask and more skill than she possesses to mount it. For fifty cents she buys a cement block to prop against the door. When she returns, Tavis is on the playground with five other little Tree House fawns. Crouching on the balcony so he won’t spot her, she hears his happy screech as he prances from the slide to the swings to the seesaw, sees his denim overalls and red sneakers crawl through a berry blue tube and climb up the wooden tree with the painted apples. When he goes inside, so does she, at a loss as to what to do.
She hasn’t written in her journal for weeks. She pulls the current notebook from its hiding place in the linen closet and sits at the card table. “I won’t go to daycare for lunch,” she writes. “Suppose he doesn’t want to leave early? I don’t trust myself not to feel crushed and show it. I want him to have fun w/out me, don’t I? Dr. Spock says he needs a full, outgoing life w/other children. If I hover he’ll pick up on my fears. I can’t moon around either & let the afternoon get away. I should give Mother our number now before Daddy’s home from work. I don’t have the energy to hear him tell me one more time to snap out of it, that I can’t leave a perfectly fine home & a husband who loves me. Because I did. He’d rather I traded self-respect for security.”
She doesn’t phone Mother. She makes three loaves of bread, kneading the dough until her knuckles turn red. The aroma of fresh-baked bread and a thick buttered slice will remind Tavis how much he needs her before she lets him call Ron. She smiles at the hand-printed index card pinned to his shirt when she picks him up at five, asks if he knows what it says.
“Yip, yip. It says I am a good sport.”
Wednesday arrives and so does Angel for dinner, hugging a six-foot tall weeping fig, Anthony and Matty peeking through the lower branches like sprites. “From Charles,” Angel says. “The leaves smell like fabric softener.” Lin takes a sniff. It’s true. Tavis herds the boys to his room while she and Angel drag the tree inside.
“How’d you get this up here by yourself?”
“Anthony sort of helped. Plus we used the elevator.”
“I don’t know Charles.” Good grief, she’s only known Angel for four days. “I can’t accept a gift from him.”
“It would be an act of compassion if you could. He has a deep need to bestow gifts.”
Grunting, they shuffle the tree into the living room, halt in front of the sliding glass door. Lin nudges it a few inches with her foot. “Did you ask him to give me this?”
“No. All I said was we tried the silk palm in your place on Sunday and it spoke to us but in some foreign language. He asked what direction your apartment faced and, next I know, there’s a tree outside my door with your name on it.”
“It looks tropical. He knows we’re in Minnesota, doesn’t he?”
“Oh yah. He was my piano teacher in Northfield when I was a kid, has perfect pitch, by the way.” She extracts a tag from the brass pot. “According to this, the window’s safe except in winter. You can move it away then, say to the end of the couch.”
Bing. The timer sounds a perfect G that startles Lin. She’s been edgy all day. It’s not that she hasn’t entertained before. She did so often at the parsonage. Mostly widowed parishioners, sometimes a trustee or two, the district superintendent, the bishop—all there because of Ron, of course, he propelling the conversation, she hovering in the background. Angel and her boys are here because of her. She feels the weight of that, the fear of falling short. To her relief, infectious giggles drift out from Tavis’s room. Just for tonight, the hall closet holds toys he doesn’t want to share. The rest are fair game. She heads for the kitchen. “Where’s Charles now?”
Angel follows her. “California. Can you blame him?”
“Not at all. Why would he give me a tree?” She does not want to get caught up in a strange man’s life right now, does not want to sense bubbles of Charles’s consciousness. When Angel says Charles has a need to rescue women and children, Lin tamps down a flare of anger. She whips two potholders out of a drawer, draws the bubbling mac and cheese from the oven and sets it on a hotplate. “I don’t need rescuing.”
Angel claps her hands on her cheeks. “Oh shoot, of course you don’t. Ignore my blathering. He probably sent you the tree so you’d like me.”
Lin’s done it again, made Angel feel bad. She’d like to put the words back in her mouth. “I don’t need a gift from Charles to like you. The word rescue is like a matador’s cape to me. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I overreacted. I’m sorry.”
Angel pulls out a chair, sits with her back to the table, facing Lin, and flashes that crooked, forgiving smile. “That’s okay. I shouldn’t have implied you needed anything. Charles and I are the ones playing out rescue scripts together.”
Scripts again. Ron says she places too much faith in Transactional Analysis to guide her life and not enough in God. But at least she doesn’t need to believe in God so badly she makes excuses for Him. She hesitates before asking, “Have you read I’m Okay, You’re Okay?”
Angel says, “I’m probably the only one in the country who hasn’t. Should I?”
“You might find what it says about scripts coincidental.”
“Maybe Rhonda read it.” She laughs. “Heck, maybe she dictated it.”
“Who’s Rhonda?”
Angel looks surprised at the question. “The disembodied spirit that comes through Jackie. You know, the channeler I go to, the medium. I told you about her Saturday night.”
“Oh, right.” Disembodied spirits. Mediums. Lin’s read of such things but has never spent time with anyone who actually believed in them. “How’d you meet her?”
“I looked under Psychics in the Yellow Pages. A friend suggested a medium might help after my ex walked out when I was pregnant with Matty and my parents offed themselves.”
Lin sucks in a breath, sags against the counter. “Criminy. I can’t imagine dealing with that.” She could smack herself for being so self-absorbed. She doesn’t ask enough questions, has never asked enough questions. Not surprising the women at church didn’t line up for her advice. She peers at Angel through fresh eyes, sees the vulnerable shadows cast by a sunny exterior. Pours her a glass of lemonade. “Tell me again how Jackie and Rhonda fit together.”
Angel grips the glass in both hands as though it might take off. “Jackie’s the one you can see. She sits in a chair and goes into a trance so Rhonda can take over her body and use her vocal cords. They don’t sound the least bit alike. Rhonda has a Yiddish accent because she says her last plantin
g—well, last in the way we think of last—was in Jewish soil. Isn’t that wonderful? It helps me imagine my life as worthy of nurturing, like the tree Charles gave you.” Her cheeks redden as though she’s said more than she wanted to. “Can I help with anything?”
“How about the bread?” Lin points to a board on the counter and a long serrated knife, asks how often Angel sees Rhonda.
“Once a week. Eight bucks for a group session. It’s cheaper than therapy.”
“Isn’t it creepy, watching Jackie get possessed?”
Angel laughs. “Her head doesn’t spin around or anything. Rhonda isn’t the Devil.”
“How do you know?” Lin takes a plate of sliced cucumbers, celery and carrots from the fridge, the carrots in “pennies” for Tavis, sets them next to the mac and cheese.
“Because I don’t believe in the Devil.” She stands and steps to the counter. “Do you?”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore. That’s why I left my husband.”
Angel picks up the knife. “Sounds like you’re ripe for Rhonda.”
Lin shakes her head. “Not quite.” Not ever, she wants to say, amazed she’s even carrying on this conversation. She sticks paper napkins under the forks on the table. She doesn’t want to come out and suggest Jackie might be faking it but she feels protective toward Angel, who looks like a schoolgirl tonight with her boyish chest and tiny hips under a nut-brown jumper dress, her slightly bowed legs in raspberry tights. “I’m wondering,” she says, “could Rhonda emerge from Jackie’s unconscious?”
Angel slices into the bread like a surgeon. “I believe Rhonda and Jackie are who they claim to be but I’m open to evidence they aren’t. I thought they’d tell me where my ex is and help me speak to my parents. That didn’t happen. But when Rhonda said we create our lives by writing scripts and acting them out with others who are creating their lives” —she stops slicing and looks at Lin with a beatific expression—“it was the most liberating thing. She said suicide is the hardest death to deal with for those left behind. So my parents accelerated my learning, gave me a gift in a way. Our script called for them to disengage from this life before me.”