Eleven (10 page)

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Let's go sit in a booth. I have plenty of money.”

He had money too, but he couldn't imagine swallowing anything. He followed her inside the empty diner and slid into the booth on the end.

They sat there, not talking, until Tom brought the hot chocolates Caroline had called for across the room.

Sam ignored his cup with the small marshmallows floating on top. “Tell me what's going on.” He leaned across the table.

She pulled out the notebook. “While you were doing nothing—”

He grinned.

“I looked at the map. I started at the towns along the St. Lawrence River and looked on the Internet, trying to link two things together with the phone information. The Children's Home and Clayton's. You know, the picture—”

“Of Mack and Lydia in front of the hardware store.”

“There's a town called Clayton.”

He took a breath.

“But that's not it. There's another town called Waterway.” She frowned. “Waterway? And there's a Clayton's hardware store, and—”

“The Children's Home.”

“Well, almost. There's an Eleventh Street.”

He sat back. They wouldn't find anything. He wanted to laugh with surprise and a feeling that was something like relief. Maybe he didn't have to know about himself. Maybe he could just stay with Mack, and Anima, and Onji forever.

Onji always talked about wild-goose chases. And this would be a neat wild-goose chase. They'd take the bus, and eat Onji's lunch. It was a great day, after all; the sun was shining. They'd have a last day they'd always remember. He picked up the mug of chocolate and downed it in one gulp.

She must have been thinking the same thing. She stretched. “Just think, we'll have this whole scoop of a day.” She hesitated. “One thing.” She leaned closer, her eyes so large, those freckles like constellations.

One thing.
Her favorite thing to say.

“I might be wrong. And if I am, let's write this all out for
you before I go.” She opened her notebook. “Begin at the beginning.”

The chocolate was suddenly a lump in his stomach, the marshmallows so gluey, he could still taste them on his tongue.

Caroline was holding a pen. “Okay. Go,” she said.

The beginning. “My parents died.”

The book was between them; she wrote at an angle.
Parents.
He could see that.

“I ended up in the Children's Home.”

“In the same town?”

In Mack's town, Onji's town. “Yes, I think so.”

Her head was bent, and he didn't bother to read what she wrote now.

“A terrible woman, a boy who took my boat. She slapped—Mean to all of us, I think. To the cat. I was so afraid for the cat.” Something tugged at the edge of his mind. Mack had built the toy boat for him, he was sure of it. He must have known Mack while he was at the home. How did that fit? He thought of footsteps in a castle. The sound of a hammer. Banging doors.

There was no time to tell Caroline more. The bus was pulling up in front of the diner. He left money on the table, and they boarded the bus, stopping to pay, in back of an old man carrying a fishing rod.

In one of the backseats, Caroline opened her lunch, a mess of a sandwich, two slabs of cheese surrounded by bread. “Horrible,” he said. “How can you still be hungry?”

“I'm always hungry.”

“Good. I have lunch for you.”

They sat there, not talking. He watched the hills flatten out. The bus traveled along next to a fast-moving stream, and people fished from rocks along the way.

After a while Sam was hungry too, but not hungry enough for the meatball hero. He dug into the bag to find two packages of saltines. He handed one to Caroline, then leaned against the window, chewing.

Every once in a while, the bus stopped to pick up passengers or to let them off. The man with the fishing rod nodded to them as he got off at the back door.

And then the driver called out, “Waterway, New York,” and they went down the steps. Nothing looked familiar to Sam: not the stores on the main street, not the park with its benches at one end, not the wooden church with its square steeple at the other.

Caroline glanced at him. “I'm going into the bakery. I'll ask.”

“Don't. Suppose—” Was this the place? And if it was, he almost felt that store owners would see him:
“There's that kid from the home, the kid from the boating accident.”

“Sam, it was years ago. Do you think you still look like the kid in the picture? Do you think anyone would know who you are?”

Before he could answer, she disappeared inside the store. He leaned against the brick wall, sun-warmed even this early in the day.

She was back. “There is a children's home, was a children's home. The baker told me how to get there. Amazing, isn't it?”

Sam felt the sudden heat in his face. He swallowed against the catch in his throat.

Caroline took his hand again, and they went down the street past the church and turned onto a small road that wound its way along in back of the main part of the town.

He walked more slowly, and then at the second turn, where trees began to meet over the path, he stopped. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Just wait—”

“It's there, but it isn't. It was closed down years ago.” Caroline tugged at his hand. “No one's there, Sam.”

He walked with her up a lane that was choked with dandelions showing their yellow tops. Gravel, gray and scattered, crunched under their feet. He remembered the sound of that gravel. “Someone brought me here, carried me on his shoulder. I was crying, cold, and he put his scarf around me.”

“I'm sorry, Sam.” Her voice was low. “I'm so sorry for that little kid.”

He saw the scarf clearly, dark with flecks of red, felt the warmth of it against his cheek, but he couldn't see the man's face.

“Was it Mack?” Caroline asked.

“No, not Mack. I don't think it was anyone I knew.” He pieced it out in his mind.
Steps.
No one to take him, probably no family, and someone, a neighbor maybe,
had brought him here. He remembered carrying the small sailboat.

Sam took a step, turned a corner. The building appeared suddenly in front of him. He stepped back, almost as if he'd been hit. It was really there, that terrible place, much more than a house, with its massive double doors in front, the number eleven over them, smaller doors on each end. Eleven, of course.

He leaned against a tree, almost forgetting that Caroline was watching him. He heard the sound of banging doors, the sound of shouting.

Sam waited for his breath to come back, staring at the place. Everything needed paint; boards on the front porch were missing.

He stopped then, his eyes going to the roof, pieces of slate cracked, but the two chimneys—

“My mother was teaching me numbers, I think,” he said, the blur of her face in front of him. “I turned my head over the man's shoulder, the day we came, and I saw it on the house,
eleven
, and then a pair of chimneys, so huge up there in the sky. They looked like the number eleven too.”

Just chimneys after all. Just the house number, the street number, of a terrible place that didn't exist anymore. And the woman who'd run the place was gone.

The doors were boarded. They walked around the back of the building and stopped to peer into the windows, to see rooms that were filled with broken furniture, dusty rooms that didn't mean anything. The kitchen was smaller than he
remembered, the refrigerator gone, no boy with the flapping hands. Maybe he'd gone far away; he could be eleven now too. The poor boy who hadn't had a toy of his own.

“I don't belong here anymore. I think I never did,” he said. “It's not my place.”

He knew where he'd been, but what was most important was still missing. Mack.

“Take the notebook, Sam,” Caroline said. They were standing on the corner near her house. There were tears in her eyes. “Learn to read, Sam. Then write to me.”

He could feel the anger simmering. “Do you think I don't want to?” But this was Caroline, and he saw her face redden. “I'm sorry, really sorry,” he said. “But I gave up on that.”

“Draw pictures, put letters together any old way. Don't worry about the spelling. I'll understand it.” The tears were running down her cheeks now, but she didn't pay attention to them.

“Maybe. I'll try.” He knew he couldn't do it.

Would he ever see her again?

“One thing,” he said, and she smiled, brushing the tears
away. “I would never have found out as much as I did without you.”

He started down the street, and she called after him. “One thing. You'll be my best friend forever.”

He raised one hand. He could hardly see her through his own tears. He turned the corner and began to run.

He stopped at the workroom door to say hello to Mack.

Mack looked up. “I'm sorry she's leaving,” he said. “Such a nice girl. Anima's made something for you, crepes, I think.”

Sam nodded, tried to smile. He walked along the back of the building, waving to Onji, and opened the kitchen door of Kerala House.

“Hey, sweetie.” Anima looked up from the sink. “I've just made banana crepes for you, and we'll have a cup of tea.” She pointed to a chair and put a plate in front of him.

How was he going to eat anything?

Anima gave a quick shake of her head, then poured tea for them both and sat opposite. She stirred a little sugar into her cup. “I'm sorry about Caroline,” she said.

He took a gulp from his own cup. So much had happened today. “We took a bus to Waterway.”

She glanced toward the window. “A long ride, but it was lovely out today. A day you'll remember.”

He glanced at her. Waterway didn't mean anything to her, he could see that. For the first time he realized she might not know anything about where he came from. He took a breath. “Remember that sweater? Could I see it? Would you tell me about it?”

She blinked. “The little blue one with the zipper?” He knew she wanted to ask why, but instead she pointed up. “Eat the crepe. The sweater's upstairs.”

Sam listened to her quick steps, the sound of a drawer opening. She brought the sweater back to the table and unwrapped the tissue paper around it.

They reached out at the same time to touch it. The wool was stiff, matted, the stitches pulled in spots.

“I want to know.”

“About when you came?” Anima reached for his hand, held it with her own small one. “It was a terrible night, with sleet covering the roads, the sound of it against the windows.” She shook her head. “Wait. Let me start at the beginning.”

Her hand was even smaller than Caroline's. She bent her head and he could see a few strands of gray mixed in with the dark hair.

“I'd come here on my own from Kerala, and I had enough money from my parents to buy this building. But I was lonely, so lonely.”

She made a chopping motion with one hand. “I had someone divide the building into three stores. Onji moved in first with Ellie; his wife had gone off somewhere. Later Ellie was married, and he was rattling around in the deli alone.”

Anima patted Sam's hand. “One day, Onji came in. Right at this table, he told me his best friend, Mack, was on his way here, that he was moving from Florida. He needed a place to live and a place to work.”

Anima tilted her head. “Onji said Mack was bringing a child from upstate somewhere.”

She sighed. “Mack was supposed to come at dinnertime. We'd made all kinds of things, Onji and I, but he didn't come, and we waited, waited. We tried to eat the cold dinner, and we worried. I opened the door to see out, and everything was covered with a crust of ice. It was midnight, then two, three, and we sat here still. Just waiting.”

His mouth was dry.
The boat? Had they been on the boat?

“Just before light, Mack came in with you.” Anima looked up. “And that cat. You were soaked, filthy; Mack looked exhausted. He'd hurt his leg somehow. When I tried to take you from him, he wouldn't let go. He sat down where you're sitting, Sam, rocking you, his head on your head. And his crying was a terrible thing to see.”

Exhausted. That was the way Sam felt now. A long day.

“At last I took you.” Her eyes were filled with tears. “I unzipped the sweater and pulled it off you. You were shivering now, and Mack, too. I found dry cloths, toweled you off. We put one of Onji's shirts on you. Huge. We've watched you grow into those shirts.” She tapped his hand with one finger. “You became our family. We never felt lonely again.” She sighed. “We never talked about that night again.”

Sam stood up and went around the table. He leaned down to put his arms around her, smelling the sweet face cream she used, leaning his head against her thick hair. “I love you, Anima.”

“I love you, too. We all do.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “Would you like to take the sweater now?”

Sam shook his head. “You keep it for me.”

He went outside and down to the water. Frogs floated on the surface, their throats swollen with song. Night Cat jumped up on Anima's bench, and Sam reached out to pet him. The cat had been lying in the sun, and his fur was warm.

Night Cat, who had come with him all the way.

Saturday again, early morning, and Caroline had been gone a week. Sam didn't bother with the kitchen light. He reached for the cereal box in the cabinet to stuff a handful into his mouth, then opened a can of tuna and dumped it onto Night Cat's plate.

In the workroom, he shoved up the windows. Outside, the air was still, and warm. Sam flexed his fingers. His hands were beginning to look like Mack's, to feel the way Mack's must feel. A callus had formed on his thumb from holding the plane. There was a small cut from a sharp edge of glass, paint under his nails; and a blue blister, perfectly round, had appeared on one finger.