by Caro Soles
Climbing up on top of the window isn’t easy. I scrape my right knee badly, and for a minute I feel dizzy, thinking of my blood smeared on the rough wall. But at last I make it. I am standing with both feet on the wide lintel, flattened against the bricks, higher than I have been before, but still not on the roof, which I can now see: a lumpy expanse of tar and pebbles just above my head. I look down. It is a big mistake. My knees begin to wobble, my legs shake. My fingers dig into the rough uneven brick as panic sweeps over me. No one is around. No one will hear me if I fall. No one will come. Below me, the broken concrete of the walkway will crack my skull, tear my flesh. I think of Horatius at the bridge in the brave days of yore, of the Spartan youth letting the fox gnaw at his entrails, of Daddy and his men going over the top at Ypres into the deadly cloud of gas. This is nothing.
Gradually I force myself to loosen the grip of my right hand and reach for the rain spout. This high up, it curves into the building from the eaves above, and I am counting on it to get me the rest of the way. If I move my left foot to the brick that sticks out a few feet up, I can use the crook in the spout as support. Don’t think. Do it! “Hold that bridge,” I mutter.
With my left foot up, my right foot swings into place. I heave my weight onto the right foot and push. There is a creak—a tearing, rending sound—and the pipe begins to tremble under me. I clutch the edge of the roof and scream, pulling myself desperately forward onto the pebbled tar. The drain pipe crashes to the broken concrete below. I pull one knee onto the roof and slowly haul myself up the rest of the way.
Relief floods through me, so sharp and sudden I start to cry.
Thank you, God!
After a few moments, I calm down and look around. I am higher than Mount Olympus. I can see part of the garden behind the stables, neglected and overgrown—not a garden at all but more like a place to dump old unwanted things. Broken dishes litter the ground under the window as if someone has thrown them there, one by one, in a rage. Rusted bedsprings lean at an angle across one corner, and vines are beginning to climb through the trellis of fractured metal, disguising the ugliness. By midsummer, the view from here might be quite different. I wonder if anyone will even be able to see these broken, useless things.
When I stand up, the branches of an old elm tree almost touch my head. From this angle, the lilac bush in the corner of my garden blocks the view of the Music House, but if I move over, closer to the emerald green of the stables’ yard, I can see it all. But there are few windows facing this way, only our own from the Everything Room and the small leaded panes from up high over the built-in cupboards in our living room. There is a dormer window on the third floor, which I guess must be Mrs. Dunn’s, but the other windows are hidden by the wild growth of the bushes protecting Rona Layne’s secret garden. No one can see me. I smile in satisfaction.
The clouds are so close now that they are tangled in the trees. I bend my head back and stare up through the shifting pattern of greenery into the pewter sky. I shiver. For the first time, I realize it is getting colder. And there is rain in the air. My right leg twinges, as if the realization has reminded it to start hurting. It’s time to go home.
I take one last look around my secret kingdom and walk over to the edge of the roof where the gutters are broken. I will have to find a new way down since the drain pipe is no longer there. I make a circuit of the roof, looking for another drain pipe, crawling under the low hanging branches of the elm, but there isn’t one. The eaves are rotted away in several places, but how will that do me any good?
I crouch on the edge, looking down on the surface of Mount Olympus. It’s not that far down, but there’s a walkway between the stables and the nearest garage. I try to calculate how far away it is, if I could make it by taking a running leap. But what if I miscalculate? Or slip on the takeoff?
The first drizzle of rain streaks my glasses. Panic flutters. I can’t risk the Great Leap now. Everything is blurred. My secret kingdom suddenly changes into a prison. I am a cursèd maiden doomed to spend the rest of my days on an invisible island. My right leg is beginning to hurt; I can feel the slow twist of pain that often comes in the dampness and cold. But I won’t give up.
I button up my sweater and lie on my stomach on the roof, reaching down over the edge with my right hand, feeling around for something to grab onto: a foothold, a stout vine, anything! Nothing. Tears spill out, making it even harder to see. I wonder if Horatius was cold and wet when he was holding the bridge. My knee is bleeding now, and as I sit up, I realize with horror that Mother’s bracelet is no longer on my arm.
“No!”
Panic claws at my stomach, and for a moment I think I may throw up. I look around me on the roof. Take off my glasses and dry them on my shirt. But they are wet again almost at once. I crawl around the whole roof, looking for the bracelet, running my hands over every inch of the rough pebbly surface. I pray to Saint Anthony. Janet told me about him, how he helps people who have lost things, even if you’re not Catholic. I often pray to him now, but never so fervently as today. My hands are getting numb. I blow on them and keep crawling. Nothing.
And then I know. The bracelet isn’t on the roof. It’s somewhere on the broken concrete down below. It must have slid off my wrist as I was feeling around for a way down. I can’t stop the tears, and now I am completely blind. I hug my knees and let myself cry. It doesn’t matter anyway. No one can see. No one will find me.
I hear Mother’s voice in my head: “Never give up, ’tis the secret of glory!” I wipe my nose and get to my feet. I look through the cloud of drizzle at the Music House. Jonathan won’t be home for ages. Neither will Mother. Daddy always sleeps for a few hours, and he was extra tired today after our walk. I wonder if Mrs. O’Malley is home. I shudder at having to call her for help, but I don’t see any sign of her anyway. In case someone might glance out their window, I wave my arms above my head and jump up and down. But who would be looking? Why? And how could they see in all this grey dullness? I sit down again and huddle in misery.
“Vanessa?”
I freeze, afraid to look.
“It’s me. Brian.”
I wipe my eyes and swivel around on my bottom. Brian’s head and shoulders appear at eye level, through the mist. Tiny droplets of water glisten on his blond curls.
“It’s all right,” he says, holding out his arms. “I’ll help you down.”
I can’t speak. My teeth are chattering with nerves. Cold. Fear.
“Come on.” His arms are reaching out to me.
Count Brian. My knight in shining armor.
I crawl over to him and slide into his arms, and he lifts me to the top of the fence, holding me steady till I get my balance and climb down the way I usually do.
“Thank you.”
He smiles and brushes off his trousers.
I tell him about Mother’s bracelet, and he jumps over the fence as if it was nothing, finds it among the cracked concrete, and climbs back again. I thank Saint Anthony silently, then Brian out loud. Twice.
“I was on the roof getting some air,” he says, and I know he means smoking. We’re walking up the stairs to the porch. He’s holding my hand. “I saw you climbing. That was pretty brave. Bad luck the drain broke. I went inside for a while and didn’t realize you couldn’t get back down until I saw you jumping up and down, waving your SOS.”
I hiccup. “I wasn’t supposed to be up there.”
“I figured as much,” he said. “I wasn’t supposed to be entertaining a friend either. Or smoking, for that matter, so we’re both guilty. It’ll be our secret. Deal?” He held out his hand.
I nodded. “Deal.” It sounds very grown up. I’ve never said that before.
“No one will ever know,” he whispers. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
I shiver as I watch him run down the hall backwards, a finger to his lips. Then he turns and disappears through the archw
ay to the third-floor stairs. “I’ll never tell. Never,” I say to myself. Then I go into the Everything Room to put the bracelet back where it belongs. Brian and I share a secret. I feel warm inside in spite of the rain.
8. JANET’S PROJECT
ON SATURDAY, MOTHER DROPS ME OFF at Janet’s house on her way to buy groceries. I haven’t seen Janet since I told her about my great adventure on the roof. I didn’t mean to tell, but somehow it all came out. I couldn’t help myself! Anyway, she promised she wouldn’t tell anyone, so I know Brian’s secret is safe too. It’s been more than two weeks, and I’m excited. All this time I’ve been thinking of her spending time with Mary Margaret, her friend at school, picturing her walking along Bloor Street with her big sister Kathleen to the Royal Conservatory for her violin lesson, wondering what it must be like to have sisters and friends. The downside seems to be rarely having new clothes, always being stuck with hand-me-downs that need to be shortened because Magda was born tall. It seems a small price to pay for companionship. I look down at my own clothes. Although they were new at one time, they are always bought a size too large so I can grow into them. Now most are a size too small. It makes me feel awkward.
Janet is wearing faded red shorts with wide legs and a striped T-shirt that looks like a boy’s. Maybe it belonged to one of her brothers. She finishes drying the dishes from lunch, and I help her put them away. Her kitchen is big, the only room in the house that seems bright, maybe because of the yellow paint on the walls and the cupboard doors the colour of the orange I get in my stocking at Christmas.
I usually choose the game, but right away Janet announces that the adventure today is gardening. “This summer we’re going to have flowers and tomato plants and maybe some potatoes,” Janet says with enthusiasm, taking off the big apron she is wearing and hanging it up behind the door. Upstairs, I can hear her mother’s sewing machine whirring steadily. “Come on. It’s warm outside. We don’t even need a sweater.” Her narrow face is flushed with the possibilities. She turns and races down the back stairs into the yard. She calls it a garden, but it’s really just a square of beaten-down earth surrounded by a wooden fence and a few scraggly bushes straining towards the sunlight. A lilac struggles into bud in one corner. The rest of the bushes look dead. I think of the Secret Garden over at my house.
Janet is standing, hands on hips, looking at the yard. “It just needs fertilizer,” she says firmly. “I read all about it in our encyclopedia.”
“How do we get that?”
“Simple. We’ll just follow the milk wagon around, and when the horse does its business, we’ll bring it back here. See? Nothing to it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Come on! He always comes around this time on Saturdays.” She thrusts a shovel at me and grabs one herself, along with a burlap bag she flings over her shoulder. She must have laid things out earlier. I follow her along the lane out to the front and watch as the horse-drawn cart clops into view. I hang back against the fence as the milkman hops off, swinging the metal basket with four bottles rattling in it, their fat little necks filled with cream. He exchanges three full ones for the empties left on Janet’s front step and goes next door with the fourth. I glance at the horse, standing patiently in the shafts in front of the Silverwoods Dairy wagon, shaking his head as if he knows what we want and has decided not to oblige.
“He’s not doing anything,” I whisper.
“He has to eventually,” Janet says. She sits on the bottom step beside the milk, elbows on her bare knees, cupping her chin in her hands. I sit beside her, the stone cool against my bottom, and together we watch the slow progress of the milkman as he clinks his way down one side of the dead-end street and up the other until he stops opposite us at Mingy Moore’s house. Mingy’s younger than us and boring to play with. He doesn’t know how to play our kind of games or plan special projects like this one. All he wants to do is play board games like Parcheesi and Snakes and Ladders, which is all right if you’re really desperate, I suppose. He lives with his parents above the garages where two gleaming ambulances lie waiting for some disaster to set them into motion. Sometimes when I think about it, it makes me tense.
I’m still thinking about Mingy Moore when Janet punches me on the arm. “He’s moving again,” she says, jumping to her feet and heading for the corner.
I follow her, feeling nervous as we turn onto Jarvis Street. It’s the first time I’ve walked on the street on my own—without Mother or Daddy or Jonathan I mean—but I don’t want to admit this to Janet, who walks all the way to school alone and is always running errands for her mother. I’m getting more and more anxious as we amble along, getting closer and closer to Wellesley. I’ve been told over and over that I’m not supposed to cross the street. I’m wondering if being with Janet would count as an excuse, when the horse finally obliges with an odoriferous pile that makes Janet caper with joy.
“But look where it is!” Panic makes my voice squeak. The lumpy piles are in the middle of the road. “If cars come, it will be flattened. If we try to shovel it up, so will we.”
“Don’t be silly.” Janet pushes her hair behind her ears and takes a firm grip on her shovel. “You hold the bag. I’ll run out and get some when the light’s green.”
“I don’t think—”
But the light has changed. She darts out and is already on the way back with a steaming load while my mind stutters to find words to stop her.
“Easy peasy!” she crows. “Hold the bag open.”
I do as she says, and she makes three more trips. It takes two light changes to get it all done, and between us we drag the steaming sack back up the street, around the corner, and along the lane into her yard.
“Now all we have to do is dig it into the ground,” she says.
We are trying to do this when Jonathan arrives to take me home.
He doesn’t say anything until we get to the corner. “You stink.” He looks at me disgustedly. “What were you playing this time? Stable hand?”
For the first time, I notice my shoes and socks are streaked with horse pooh, and there are traces of brownish yellow on my wrists and the front of my dress.
“We were preparing the earth for planting,” I say, trying to make it sound important, but it comes out in short bursts as he grabs my hand and pulls me across the street unceremoniously.
By the time we arrive on the back porch, where Mother is watering the window boxes, I am out of breath.
“Look at her!” he exclaims, throwing out his hand to indicate my state. “Covered in horse dung!”
“I am not covered,” I say. “And anyway, it was for the garden!”
Mother looks me up and down, wrinkles her nose. “Of all the unladylike activities,” she scolds, peeling off my shoes and socks. “Does Janet’s mother know what you were doing?”
“I don’t know.” I am suddenly miserable at the thought of getting Janet in trouble, perhaps being forbidden to play with her again. “It was just gardening!” I exclaim, knowing how much she longs for her own garden.
“Poor girl won’t ever get anything to grow in that dank patch of mud. Go inside and get undressed. You need a bath.”
“A real bath or a sponge bath?” I ask.
“We’ll see.”
Usually I look forward to having a real bath, but it takes organizing in this house. Mother doesn’t want us holding up the bathroom when others might need it, so right before dinner and right after dinner are out. It’s late afternoon now, so I have to make do with a sponge bath in the small dressing space off the Everything Room. This tiny place is always filled with the sharp medicine smells of Daddy’s ointments and the lotions he uses to dull the pain and itching of his ruined skin. It is like a tiny hospital in here. Two shelves are covered with bottles and jars and tubes, several pill bottles, and rolls of bandages in different sizes. I imagine him in here in the evening, slathering himself with lotio
ns in an effort to smother the flames, wrapping his arms, his legs, his waist with the bandages like an Egyptian mummy. Only under his clothes does he look like a casualty of war. I think of Janet’s dad, who was in the latest war. He wasn’t a casualty, at least not that I know of. But maybe he, too, has a secret wound that eats at his flesh or maybe his brain. It’s a new idea, and it fascinates me.
“Vanessa!”
I push my glasses up on my nose and realize that Mother has been talking all this time. This is not good. She is examining the clothes I stuffed in the laundry bag. “Have you any idea how hard it is to keep clothes clean? Any idea how my hands ache after washing out your blouses and shorts and undies? Come here. Look at these socks!”
I stare down at the streaked yellowish socks and push my glasses up on my nose. “I’m sorry.”
“Wash them.” She fills the sink with water and plunges in the socks. “Rub the soap into them and keep scrubbing until they’re clean. Completely clean. Do you understand?”
I nod. She hands me the bar of yellow laundry soap and leaves me alone.
It takes a long time. I have to keep stopping to wipe the tears off my glasses so I can see. The socks still don’t look really clean like when Mother does them, but I hang them up on the line on the porch and hope for the best. My fingers are all wrinkly.
I go into the living room, where Mother is talking to Daddy.
“I’ll set the table,” I say quickly.
“Please do,” says Mother, and she gives me one of her piercing looks as if trying to see through my skull into my thoughts.
I am sent to bed early. I lie in the Everything Room, pressed against the wall on my part of the bed. The wallpaper is coming away from the wall along the seam here, and I try not to pick at it. There are bunches of purple flowers on the paper and purple curtains on the bay window that look as if they have been here for a long time. Mother took them down when we moved in and hung them over the porch railing. Clouds of dust wafted out when she hit them with a broom. Mother ripped up old lace curtains and remade them to go under the purple ones; it brightens the room a little in the daytime and makes it so you can’t see in very well from the porch.