Jake (4 page)

“That’s gotta be hard on her. You can see that.”

I wanted a bike. I couldn’t be mad about not getting one, that was the hard part. I shifted in the car seat to get off the achy part of my butt.

I was holding Mom’s coat, and it smelled like her. Part curry powder that she likes to cook with and part sweet orange that her face cream smells like and part this dry silver plant with round leaves that she puts all around the apartment. I got real tired in the car. I think I fell asleep for a minute.

Mrs. Buttermark met Stan and me at the door in
her dressed-up-to-go-out look. This always reminds me that she’s old, the way she dresses up to meet people.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked him. “I make a mean hot chocolate.”

“No, thank you,” Stan said.

Mrs. Buttermark is no pushover, that’s what Mom says about her. In about three minutes she had him in her kitchen, making a fuss over him being the kind of young man people look up to. “Your mother must be so proud of you,” she told him.

Before she let Stan go, she found out who might be operating on Mom and who was in charge of her. She got a lot of details I never would’ve known anything about.

“You should’ve been that famous spy Mom calls you,” I said to her after she shut the door on Stan.

“Mata Hari,” Mrs. Buttermark said.

“She never said it in a mean way,” I said, worried I might have hurt her feelings. “Mom loves you.”

“Sweetie, it is the highest compliment to be called a Mata Hari. She was one smart cookie.”

I took my jacket off and hung it on this thing called a hat tree. You have to be careful to make things like more than one jacket balance out or it falls over.

“Stan never told me half the stuff he told you.”

“You can’t expect to know what to ask,” she said, helping me hang the jackets. Mom’s opposite mine and Mrs. Buttermark’s coat, that’s how it had to be.

“Some things come with experience,” she was saying. “Now my Harry was two times in the hospital before he—well, before he met his expiration date. I get the feeling your mother is in very good hands.”

“Okay.” I headed for the kitchen.

“Pour yourself a glass of milk and help yourself to anything else you want. Make a sandwich or heat up some of that bean soup in the container on the second shelf,” she said as I looked into the fridge.

I was used to making myself at home with Mrs. Buttermark, and she did the same whenever she was in our apartment. We’ve been neighbors for as long as I could remember. Unless she’s eating with me when Mom goes out, Mrs. Buttermark lives on soup and sandwiches. Food for kids and old ladies, she said once.

Except sometimes she makes meat loaf and mashed potatoes.

She went off to her room for a few minutes and I decided I wasn’t in the mood for a sandwich. As I was putting the soup in the pot, she came back in jeans
and a flannel shirt. When she wasn’t doing the dressed-up look, Mrs. Buttermark dressed like Mom.

She goes to yoga class with Mom. She does Tai Chi, which is like karate, only a lot slower and without all the falling down. Mom says Tai Chi is too hard on her knees, that’s why
she
doesn’t do it—so most of the time Mrs. Buttermark doesn’t seem like an old lady at all.

She turned the heat up and gave the soup a stir.

“I have to feed the fish,” I said, remembering.

She turned the heat way down and said, “Let’s go together.”

I used my key but I was glad she came along. It was weird to go into our apartment knowing I’d be leaving in a few minutes. To know Mom wasn’t coming home for a while. The fish hurried to the surface, like they’d missed me.

Mrs. Buttermark put water in an empty can so I could water the Christmas tree. She did the dishes we left in the sink. There were only two plates and glasses, forks and a frying pan. It didn’t take long. I got my pajamas and toothbrush, and then we were outta there.

“Better stir the soup,” Mrs. Buttermark said as we
crossed the hall again to her apartment. After she put a hot bowl of soup in front of me, she called somebody named Ben, who turned out to be a doctor. He knew a lot about broken legs, from the sound of things, and promised to make a couple of calls about Mom.

Then Mrs. Buttermark hung up and told me Ben would call over to the hospital and if there was anything we ought to know, he’d call us.

She clicked one fingernail on the counter, a sign she’s thinking.

She called someone named Larry and told him what happened. I had no idea Mrs. Buttermark knew so many guys she called by their first names.

It’s what I always suspected. People lead a whole life I know nothing about while I’m in school all day. Mrs. Buttermark asked me, “Where’re the car keys?”

I shrugged. “Mom opened the car with them before she fell.”

“Somebody from the supermarket mall probably picked them up,” she said into the phone. “Or they’re at the hospital.”

She listened for a second.

She said, “Tell them you want her car parked over here in our building’s lot. They can leave the keys
with the superintendent. And if they don’t have the keys, tell them the transmission is in perfect working order. We don’t want it wrecked.”

Mrs. Buttermark saw my eyebrows raise over this. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “The people at the supermarket will think Larry is your mom’s lawyer, which is probably a good thing.”

When she got off the phone, I said, “Is he
your
lawyer?”

“I guess he would be if I needed one. He’s my bridge partner.” She put on water for tea. “Do you want some cheese and crackers to go with that soup?”

“Nah. It’s good.”

“Cheese and crackers are good too,” Mrs. Buttermark said.

“I’m almost full,” I said. “I might have room enough to squeeze in some apple pie.” Mrs. Buttermark is never out of apple pie.

She put a slice of pie on a plate for each of us. We moved away from the counter to this little round table where Mrs. Buttermark looks out the window while she eats.

We looked at her Christmas tree too. It’s small, but it’s good. When I was little I loved all the tiny old-fashioned toy ornaments. There are pearly glass balls
you can see yourself in, in miniature. Even the tinsel is extra-thin and short, so it doesn’t hang down off the tree too far.

I’d begun to feel better, enough so that I had stopped worrying for a few minutes. I hoped that was okay.

“Ben hasn’t called,” I said.

“No news is good news,” she said. She didn’t look worried either.

“I guess so.”

“What do you and your mom do on Saturday nights? Watch TV?”

“Play chess.”

“Chess?”

“Yeah.”

She put a hand on her hip. “All these years of living across the hall from you, how come I don’t know you play chess?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because we play on a table in Mom’s bedroom. The tabletop is the board and there’s a drawer on each side for the pieces. We can leave it set up in there and it doesn’t get messed up.”

She was already on her way to the hall closet. I figured she was getting a jigsaw, because Mrs. Buttermark loves jigsaws. I don’t exactly love them, but I don’t
mind sitting over them and sorting through the pieces when I’m with her.

She banged around in there for a minute and came up with a chess game. It was the kind with a fold-up board and plastic pieces, but who cares? It was a chess game.

One piece was missing, a bishop. Mrs. Buttermark got a tiny salt shaker to replace that piece and we were in business.

I slept on
Mrs. Buttermark’s couch that night. I felt good when she turned out the lights. The couch was comfortable, even if my tailbone was sore.

Mrs. Buttermark told me that’s what I hit when I fell. She did it herself one time. It could be sore for longer than Mom’s leg was broken, but it would get better after a while. I fell asleep thinking it was funny that people had a tailbone.

Then I dreamed my mom got lost in the museum.

Also, she got off the subway train without me and I got lost. Then she fell into her cup of tea and drowned because I couldn’t swim out to get her.

This was stupid because we don’t have subway trains in Baltimore and no one drowns in a cup of tea.

I
got lost in the museum once but I didn’t even
know it. I had too many things to look at to wonder where Mom was. I was lost and I was found before I knew anybody was upset.

Anyway, I kept waking up all night long in a sweat to throw the blanket off. Then I’d wake up cold and huddle up under it again. The clock read 5:55 when I woke up the last time and used the bathroom.

Mrs. Buttermark got up a few minutes after I went back to the couch. I heard the shower running for a long time. I didn’t see her again for an hour.

I have this idea the only way to live with a female is to be up ten minutes before she is so you can use the bathroom. Or don’t even bother to get out of bed until an hour after she goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. It’s true with Mom. It’s true at Aunt Ginny’s and Suzie’s too.

You don’t get anywhere till sometime past noon unless you absolutely have to be at school or karate class or a doctor’s appointment. I don’t know why.

I turned on a lamp and got one of the books off Mrs. Buttermark’s shelf and started to read. It started off great, with a dead body on the second page, and this lady detective who decides to solve the murder.

*   *   *

We got to the hospital around eleven. For somebody who gets up way before the sun comes up, eleven is noon. I still felt like we made good time.

They had moved Mom to a different floor. After a few minutes of confusion, we found her room. She was sleeping, although her face didn’t look so much like a mask.

There was a man standing on each side of her bed.

I could tell one of them was a doctor. White jacket, with a clipboard. He looked like a guy I saw on the basketball court in the park in summer. I hoped it wasn’t really him, though, because that guy was in high school.

The other guy was dressed for a fishing trip, it looked like to me. He had an old face but his shoulders looked big, like he worked out. His white hair had been cut so short I could see pink skin underneath.

He looked strange. But there was a whiff of something in the room that made me want to take a deep breath.

The doctor asked us, “Are you family?”

“I’m Liz’s neighbor,” Mrs. Buttermark said to them as if she was the school principal. “This is Jake, her son. Who might you be?”

The doctor was quicker to answer, but he looked less interested than the other guy. The doctor said some things about how the swelling had gone down, so they could operate. Mom didn’t have much pain, which sounded good to me.

The other guy turned out to be my granddad.

“Colonel Wexler,” he said, and shook Mrs. Buttermark’s hand. He didn’t say anything to me. It was almost like he didn’t know I was there.

From his voice, I always pictured him being something like the pictures of my dad, only older. I had the idea he wouldn’t exactly surprise me if I ever met him.

He did surprise me.

My dad was blond, and taller than Mom in their pictures. Skinny too. Granddad was sort of chunky. If Mom was standing up, she’d be taller than him.

Granddad didn’t look like a complete stranger. That was the amazing part. I guess he was thinking the same sort of things, because it was a few seconds before he shook my hand too.

He said, “Why don’t we talk out in the hall and let Liz sleep? It was a long night.”

We’d brought some things Mom might want. Mrs. Buttermark set the bag down by the window.

In the hall, I said, “The doctor said she slept all night.”

“In and out,” he said, looking only at Mrs. Buttermark. It was like he had something he wanted to say that I shouldn’t hear.

With Mom and Aunt Ginny, I’d go away and let them say whatever they wanted to, but with Mom lying in that bed, I had to hear everything.

He said, “I got here around midnight, before they gave her more pain meds.”

“So you came straight to the hospital,” Mrs. Butter mark said. She was doing the same thing he did, talking over my head. I had the strangest feeling she was really talking to me. “Were you here all night? How very kind.”

“That woman told me the boy was here by himself,” he said.

The boy. Me? He meant me? I said, “Miss Sahara said I had to leave.”

He glanced at me, then away. I’d seen that look before, only I couldn’t think where. It made me feel like he thought I should’ve stood my ground or something. Be at the hospital when he got there.

I said, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Of course I came,” he said, making me wish
Matthew’s grandmother was on my side. He spoke in Mrs. Buttermark’s direction, flicking a look over me. “You think I wouldn’t come when you need me?”

“I didn’t know Miss Sahara called you.” That wasn’t quite true. I did know, sort of. I suspected it, anyway.

“Liz should have called me herself,” he said.

It happened I’d glanced at Mrs. Buttermark and I saw the look on her face. She didn’t like what Granddad said. She kept quiet about it, so I did too.

Granddad went on saying, “That woman, Sahara, was, was—”

“Bossy,” I said.

“So officious,” Granddad said.

“Insufferable,” Mrs. Buttermark agreed. I’d told her about Miss Sahara. “I guess she wanted to go home. It was probably the end of her day.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Liz and I were able to talk about how to handle her situation,” Granddad said. I was glad to hear Mom had been awake sometimes. Maybe she’d wake up while I was here.

I could see Granddad had been an army guy his whole life. He sounded like he was in the middle of a war movie, deciding on his strategy. Not that I get
to see a lot of those movies. Mom says I’m too young to watch stuff like that. Mainly it’s that she doesn’t like war movies. I get to watch movies that have drug addicts in them, and kissing. I’m too young for that kind of stuff too.

Granddad said a few more things about the doctor, how good he is at this kind of surgery, and finished up saying, “I told Liz I’d see to the boy.”