by Rae Richen
Glyn’s dad, Merlyn Jones, came for dinner with Susan and Grandma, partly, Dad said, to watch his son wait on others.
Yeah, great, Glyn thought.
Glyn’s sister, Arwain, had called him. She said she wanted to come witness the same thing, but, thank God, she had a presentation in her U.S. history class at University of Portland that evening.
“Waiting tables is a mighty switch for the well-catered kid,” Papa Merlyn said.
Glyn thought, Dad, you wouldn’t know what catered looks like unless you looked up from your integral theory book when Mom brings you a latte.
But he didn’t say such things, because he liked to watch Mom and Dad take care of each other. He knew lots of friends who would give their golf club membership to have such luck in the parent department.
At the end of serving desserts, Glyn sat down and the three of them brainstormed how to keep the family safe while some drug lord seemed to be hunting for Glyn, for Susan’s car and possibly for other people.
“What about Arwain?” Mom asked. Glyn’s sister lived at home and attended the University of Portland, working toward a masters-in-teaching.
“We should move her into a friend’s home for a while,” Glyn suggested. “How about if she lives temporarily with Claudia Ash?” Claudia lived in a high rise near U. of Portland., and often had Arwain over after late classes.
Mom texted Arwain not to come home after her six to nine evening class, and then texted Claudia to expect her for a while, explanations to follow.
Glyn was relieved his brother, John Philip, aka Phip or J.P., was not at home. His Marine instincts would have had him out shaking down guys for info about Trace. J.P. could be effective, but in town, his methods were not backed up by the corps. The Marine motto, Semper Fi, Always Faithful, might work in the corps and during a battle, but in the streets, drug lords were loyal only to money and fear.
Barney, their friend who owned a security company had come by today to upgrade their home system with outdoor lights and alarms triggered by motion. He’d also put his call staff on high alert for the home address.
“Now,” Grandma said, “how do we keep Glyn in school, but safe? That’s where they’ll get at him, or any of the other boys.”
And there, the adult planning fell down entirely.
**
That evening the Ancient Nation met in the new rehearsal space. First, they worked on the school problem. Danny kept interjecting ideas that came from west of the constellation Alpha-Centauri, then he pouted when ignored. His fantasy street life wasn’t going to help them.
They figured they could work with some teachers to pick up homework assignments. The chem teacher, would be a problem.
“Chem Ventura, claims he makes no exceptions for students on the road,” Markus said.
“Well,” Leneld said, “We’re not actually on the road, just on the lam.”
DeAndre braved his fears. “I’ll go to Chem class for Markus, Glyn, and me.”
In the end, those in Ventura’s class agreed to take turns showing up. They’d avoid opening and closing hours, when Trace’s people would most likely be looking for them.
“Okay, we got school taken care of,” Leneld said. “And now for Trace.”
They outlined what Glyn, Leneld and DeAndre knew about rumors of Trace. The also decided to stay away from Felipe’s gas station on the theory that Felipe was in enough hot water from being connected with them. And they decided to go in twos to the hideouts under Portland’s many bridges and in the parks hoping he was lying low instead of kidnapped.
Without more information, they couldn’t unravel his disappearance. They hoped something would pop up soon. Living scared, especially for Glyn in a locked retirement center, didn’t appeal. Nobody knew how many members of the rap group were watched by the people who might have taken Trace. Glyn and DeAndre for sure, but who else was in danger?
Glyn had to go up to the kitchen and work on late night dishwashing. The rest of the crew split up into groups of two to visit the bridges.
Glyn climbed the back stairs from the storage practice area and turned a corner to enter the kitchen. He recognized the girl at the other end of the room, the girl with the violets embroidered on her blouse.
Violeta Aguirre.
She seemed to be leaning her head in her hands. Hearing the squeak of Glyn’s shoes, she straightened abruptly, kept her back to him, and pretended to have been straightening a shelf of pans that didn’t need straightening.
“Violeta,” he said. “¿Cómo está esa noche?” Glyn spoke slowly, trying to remember the little Spanish he’d learned in his freshman class.
“Muy bien. Y usted?.” She answered as if she knew he needed all the talk to be very slow.”
“Más o menos,” he said. She missed his elegant gallic shrug because she didn’t turn to face him. All his watching as Grandma taught acting was wasted on this little one.
Glyn guessed she was maybe a sophomore, but dinky, not like she didn’t eat, but like she moved swiftly everywhere she went. He knew she normally did move pretty fast. He’d been watching her clean tables after dinner for the last two weeks. He always hoped to catch a glimpse of her dimple and those big brown eyes, but she rarely looked at anything but her work.
She turned toward him at last. Her eyes were rimmed in red and a tear hung at the edge of her lid.
“Why are you crying, Violeta?”
She shrugged, and then said, “Oh, I am being silly.”
“No, in English the word is sad. Why are you sad?”
She glanced at him as if he were a sooth-sayer. “You are right, sad, for a silly reason. My sister, my best friend, left for the university this morning. I should be glad for her. She has a scholarship to become a doctor.”
Glyn nodded. He knew this feeling. “Yes, glad for her, but sad for the change in your lives together. I have a brother and a sister. They are both away and that makes me sad, so I understand.”
She looked at him with surprise. “Where are they now?”
“My brother is in Iraq, so in danger. That scares me for him, so I just write a lot of letters and hope. My sister goes to school here at the University of Portland, and she actually lives at home, but I am almost never home when she is there.”
Violeta sat down near the sink. “I’m sorry to worry you with my little problem.”
“Your sadness is no little problem. Each one’s sadness is a big weight.”
She sat there, looking at him solemnly. Finally, she said, “Thank you.”
He had a sudden idea. “¿Puede enseñarme un poquito español?” He hoped she could teach him Spanish. That way, he’d get to see those eyes more often.
“¿Está triste todavia, amiga?” he asked. She looked about as sad as he could imagine.
“No. Hay una cebolla en el refrigerador.”
He thought fast to figure out she teased him now, by blaming her sadness on an onion. Thank goodness for some memory from that class.
“¿Puedo luchar con esta cebolla? Can I beat up your onion?”
Finally, she laughed, a shy laugh that she tried to hide behind her hand. “¿Porque quiere aprender el español?” she asked.
Did he have a reason for learning Spanish? Might as well be honest. “Para hablar con usted, Violeta. ¿Es este una razón suficiente?”
She seemed to be surprised by the idea that talking to her might be sufficient reason to learn a language.
She said, “Me gustaría te lo enseñar el español. I would be glad to teach you Spanish.”
He smiled, and finally she smiled, showing him the best view of the day. “Thanks,” he whispered. “I mean muchas gracias.”
By the time Glyn finished his kitchen detail, he’d learned how to buy a bus ticket (puedo comprar una billetta?), and shop for onions and beef (donde estan los cebollos y bif-tec?) in a Spanish tienda. He learned to say good night and then saw Violeta out to her father’s car where he was able to say “Mucho gusto de conocerlo, Señor Aguirre.”
After Violeta and her father left, he climbed up to Grandma Willie’s place. She met him at the door and handed him a key. “Be quiet when you come and go. Geneva’s still torqued at me, and her room is just the other side of your bedroom wall.”
Glyn fell into bed without changing.
Chapter Six
In the morning, a banging on his bedroom wall brought Glyn straight up out of a dream about dancing tango with Violeta.
“You stop that, you Nazi Jew hater.”
He recognized Geneva’s high voice just as Grandma Willie opened the door and motioned for him to say nothing.
Waving him into the living room, Grandma backed up into her walker, grabbed the handlebars and whipped around. Glyn didn’t even have a chance to stand up and stop her. She stopped her own potential fall, righted herself and then whispered.
“She heard you snoring. I see you’re already dressed for school.”
“Just didn’t change last night. But we worked it out.” At her quizzical raise of eyebrows, he explained. “Ancient Nation. Each of us goes one day, gets homework for the band. That way, we only expose one person at a time to the ones looking for us. My turn is Thursday.
“And this is okay with the teachers?”
“Leneld is taking a message today. We’ll see.”
“While you’re here, then, there are some things I’ve been asking maintenance to do. I hope you can do them.”
Glyn grew wary. “Such as.”
“Set up my new bird feeders on the balcony.”
“Grandma, birds shit.”
“And I’ve got a tarp for underneath them.”
“Which you will wash where?”
“We’ll take it to the Laundromat at Twenty-Eighth and Sandy.”
“We?”
“It’s big.”
A few minutes later, they left the apartment for breakfast in the dining hall. Today, Glyn was Willie’s guest for breakfast and lunch, he worked the dinner and cleanup shift. As they trudged down the hall for the elevator, a door behind them opened.
“I thought you had that boy sneaking around, getting into my things.”
Glyn pivoted. “Good morning, Miss Oppenheim. Want to go to breakfast with us?”
“And have you pick my brain? You stay out of my rooms, boy!”
Grandma Willie put her hand on his arm. “Geneva, this is my grandson, Glyn. He’s here to visit for a time.”
“I saw him last night. Sneaking into the basement with those boys,” she shouted. “I know they want in my storage space, but I got that locked so Houdini can’t break in.”
Around them, other doors opened. Heads poked from corners. The people waiting at the elevator held the door, so they could hear what might happen next.
The door across the hall opened and her neighbor, Henry Crick poked his head out. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen. May I offer my assistance?”
Grandma said, “We are working things out, Henry. Thank you.”
Miss Oppenheim glared at Henry. He smiled at her. “Ma’am,” he said, as if tipping an imaginary cap to her.
Henry then glanced at Glyn and said, “Nice to see you, Glyn.” Then he poked his head back inside his room.
Grandma spoke to Geneva. “We’ll see you at breakfast, dear.”
“Leave me alone, Wilhalmena.”
Grandma ignored Geneva’s anger, and trudged down the hall toward the elevator.
Glyn whispered, “Is she for real? Or is this a put on so she can get committed?”
“Don’t be mean,” his grandmother whispered. “This is what post-traumatic stress sometimes looks like.”
“Stress from when she was five?”
“You don’t get rid of that early trauma. You just live around it, until sometime when it attacks you again.”
“Yeah, well she’s been attacked by something, that’s for sure.”
“Glyn!”
“Okay, Grandma. But for three years you and Miss Oppenheim have been friends. I’ve been here to visit, and she welcomed me. Now, she doesn’t even seem to remember me.”
“Yes. The whole thing is very disturbing. I don’t understand what has triggered this relapse for her.”
“What’s she accusing you of?”
“She’s not giving up on the idea that I’m German. There is nothing we can do once she gets that firmly in mind.”
The first breakfast crowd entered the elevator while Glyn and Grandma were still twenty feet away. The door closed.
“What was she saying the other night,” Glyn asked as they waited for the next elevator. “I mean just before she got angry with you?”
“She was remembering her days as slave labor in the camp that built the V2 rockets in Germany.”
“But you and she used to go to the Art Museum together. What happened?”
“She thought I wasn’t taking her seriously.”
“What were you doing?”
“Trying to sympathize. It didn’t work.”
Glyn shook his head and poked at the elevator buttons.
**
Later that morning, Grandma went off to read to the people in the Alzheimer’s unit, one of her many jobs in Holly Hill. Glyn began bolting her bird feeder stanchions to the rails of her balcony. The feeders would hang on wrought-iron stakes. The top of each stake had a shepherd’s crook for hanging the feeders. Above the crook, the stake was topped by a sharp point, like a medieval soldier’s pike.
“Perfect,” Grandma had said. “an infantry weapon for birds to sit on and poop.”
He’d convinced Grandma to cut the heavy painters’ tarp into three pieces and put one under each feeder.
As he drilled the third bolt hole, Geneva came out on her adjoining balcony. She stretched out, and around the wall between them.
“Boy, you take those things down, or I will turn you in to the manager here.”
“Hello, Miss Oppenheim. I’m sorry about the drilling noise. These hold Grandma’s bird feeders, and they are permitted.”
“Don’t try to fool me, Glyn Jones. Those are signals to satellites.”
“Ma’am, Grandma has no way to send signals anywhere. She doesn’t even have Wi-Fi in her apartment.”
“She’s got a cell phone, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, I gave her one for Christmas.” Glyn realized Geneva could be very with it and present sometimes, aware that Grandma had a cell phone, but she went to some other place and time during other parts of a conversation.
“Cell phone,” she said. “Thought so. Take those down, now.”
He grabbed up one of the bird feeders and hung it on the shepherd’s crook. “See? This is what they’re for.”
“That’s camouflage. Like the V2. Paint it like a forest and dirt and make everyone believe it isn’t what it is.”
Glyn stood up. “Tell me about that V2. How did you work on it?”
“You’re young. You couldn’t have known. Why are you working for her?”
Glyn thinks about her accusation, and thinks they should be more open with Geneva. But he also noticed a change in her voice, a rhythm that made her seem more foreign when she talked about those times. He wanted to help her be more rational about Grandma and others.
“Grandma lived in Colorado, in the U.S. while you lived over there. My grandpa worked for the United States Air Force.”
“She cooked in the camp,” Geneva insisted. “That porridge-making, watery soup creator. I know what she did there.”
“Miss Oppenheim, my Grandma is not German. She’s a pacifist.”
“See?” she pointed a long finger at him. “More camouflage.”
“What didn’t she understand the other night?”
Her face hardened. “You just want me to reveal my sources. You’re part of the plan.”
“Plan to . . .?”
She slumped on her balcony rail. “All those children. They will starve, or the commandant will find some reason to hang them.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Those ti
mes scared everyone.”
Geneva straightened. “It’s coming again. Watch your back.”
She pulled herself back to her side of the wall, but he could still hear her. “They’ll move them out of the warehouse soon, and we’ll never again see them.”
Glyn stood on his side of the wall, thinking how weird the woman seemed. Her voice changed, her whole manner changed back and forth from fearful child to grown, but angry woman. The last thing she said, she sounded more like the woman who had lived in the United States for almost sixty years. He didn’t get it.
**
In the Alzheimer’s Unit of Holly Hill Retirement Center, on the fourth floor, Willie read aloud for everyone. She’d been a drama major in college and helped out with many amateur drama presentations in her children’s school days and at the Methodist Church, so she’d maintained her ability to hold an audience with her voice.
For the next few weeks, she’d chosen Little Britches by Ralph Moody, a great book for kids and adults. It dealt with the difficulties of the ranching life in Colorado, the Great Depression, which many of her audience remembered better than the events of yesterday. Ralph Moody wrote from his life as a little boy who wished to be a great horseman like the ranch hands who worked on ranches near his family.
She wondered how soon her neighbor, Geneva, might be moving into this unit with the ten who already lived here. Some of these people had been her neighbors in earlier years, the friend they no longer remembered. She knew from watching, that forgotten sons and daughters suffered greatly at the loss of the parent who still lived.
She wondered about the newest inhabitant, Don Corrigan. His nephew had helped him get settled on the morning after Geneva’s blow up, but several days later, Don still didn’t participate in the readings. He hung around on the edges of everything. The nephew had been back once, but didn’t seem that close to Don, just a hovering pressure for Don to stick with some program the nephew had planned out for him.
So, Don Corrigan sat in the living room, but not in the circle of those who listened. Still, Wilhalmena was certain he listened.
Maybe he remembered the Great Depression, as well. Some memories lurked yet within her old friends, so she tried to find books that would relate to those memories.