Ms. Zephyr's Notebook (16 page)

They sat together quietly for a moment. “Did you get a chance to talk with her at all?” he asked at last

“A bit, I guess,” said Cleo, setting the cloth aside. The blood flow had finally stopped. “But she wasn't herself, really. I think she was mostly gone, to tell you the truth. She wasn't coherent — not the way she always used to be.”

Cleo looked at him and for the first time her eyes showed the traces of tears. “I wanted to tell her about everything that has happened and to confess about losing the astrolabe. But she left me before I could even apologize.”

The astrolabe. Logan opened his mouth to speak, but just then Mrs. Beadle put her head through the door and looked from Logan to Cleo and back again. “The funeral home director is here. Would you like to speak with him now?”

Cleo shook her head. “Perhaps a little later,” she said. “I need to talk a little with my… my cousin first.”

“Whatever you'd like, dear,” said Mrs. Beadle. Cleo
nodded at the clerk as she left the room and turned away from the bed.

“Let's go home,” she said, and she took Logan firmly by the hand.

“Home?”

“Nona's place, of course.”

Cleo smiled a little and gestured to the body of her grandmother. “That's not her anymore. She's gone — and I want to see her place before she's gone from there, too.” She picked up her own coat and stuffed Logan's things into his hands.

Logan felt puzzled, but keeping his eyes carefully averted from the bed, he followed Cleo out the back door. “No need to run into the staff again,” she said by way of explanation, “and it's a shorter walk this way.” She pulled her hat right down to her eyes and pushed her hands into red mittens as she started off down the street. Logan shrugged into his coat and followed her, jogging a little to catch up.

The snow had stopped and the air was quiet. A single set of tire tracks marked the way along the silent road where they walked.

It took a moment before Logan noticed the small black bag dangling from Cleo's wrist.

“It's Nona's purse,” she said when he asked. “It was the only thing she was clear about when she spoke to me. She made me take it, so I hid it in the sleeve of my sweater so the staff wouldn't think I was stealing from
my dead grandmother.”

Logan was feeling a momentary rush of admiration for Cleo's felonious behaviour when he nearly tripped over her. She had stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and he realized she was crying. Full out — not just leaking a little around the eyes. In seconds it progressed to heavy sobs, tears pouring down her face, hiccupping breath — the whole package. A moment after that her legs started to wobble so much he feared she might fall onto the frozen ground.

He put an arm around her to steady her and looked desperately about for somewhere to take her. They were only a few strides from a bus shelter, so he pulled her inside and helped her down onto the bench before she could fall.

He didn't know what else to do, so he took one of her red mittens in his hands and waited.

She leaned against his shoulder and cried.

The snow had almost stopped and the cold had lost some of its sharpness — somehow muted a little. The girl beside him cried on. Logan just sat there and looked out at the day.

A bus pulled up, but he waved it away. The bus driver gave him a cheery wave back.

Cleo kept crying.

Logan wondered how long one person could continue to produce tears at this rate. He'd never seen anything like it.

After what felt like hours, she started to hiccup. He passed her a crumpled napkin covered in banana bread crumbs to clean her face. It was all he had in his pocket.

“Thank you,” she said, and blew her nose. “I'm sorry. I don't know why that happened. I guess I've just never thought of Nona as my dead grandmother before.”

Logan nodded. He wasn't sure that there was anything he could safely say, so for once he kept his mouth closed.

It was the right thing to do.

Ten minutes later, Cleo led them up the front walk of a neat bungalow on Front Street. Only a thin skim of snow lined the walk.

“The neighbours keep the sidewalks clear,” Cleo said. She opened Nona's purse and drew out the house key, attached to a little chain with a house dangling from it.

“Are you really okay?” Logan asked as she opened the front door. He was feeling a little worried about the possibility of another crying jag.

“Yeah. I'm fine,” she said. And in they walked.

“Wouldja look at this place? It's like some kind of museum.”

Logan saw Cleo smile a little at that, though her eyes and nose were still bright red. It was good to see some colour in her face, if only from crying.

“I told you she was special,” she said, running her fingers through a thin film of dust on the tabletop. “Didn't you read my essay?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I just forgot, that's all.”

“You totally did not read it. Too bad. It was an amazing piece of writing. Abbie gave me an A. It's probably still there, in your stolen goods.” She pointed to Abbie's notebook, the one corner of the cover that stuck out from the plastic looking considerably worse for its journey.

“Look, I only stole Abbie's notebook so I could use it to find you. Maybe I didn't have time to read the whole thing.”

For the first time, she peered at him closely. “You're lying,” she said after a moment. “I think you really did read it after all. You're only saying you didn't read it because you think cool guys don't read.”

“Not true.”

“It is so. And that's where you're wrong, bucko. Cool guys do read. And write, too. Look at Holden Caulfield.”

“Holden Caulfield was a figment of J.D. Salinger's imagination,” Logan snapped. “He wasn't a real person.”

“Ha!” Cleo's face registered something other than pain for the first time that day. “I knew you'd get that. Means you had to have read the book, moron.”

Logan rolled his eyes. There was no arguing with the female of the species. She was like a dog with a bone in its teeth — might as well just give up now. “Yeah, well,
I only read that because Abbie told me I might like it. That and a book of poetry by Robert Frost. And she took away my Xbox, so I had nothing better to do.”

“Anyway,” Cleo continued, still smug from her small victory. “Since you read my essay, you should remember that Nona collected antiques.”

Logan looked around again. “My grandmother collects antiques, too,” he admitted, “but this house looks nothing like hers. Her house is huge and old and filled with pieces of smelly furniture, and each one weighs seven tons.”

Cleo shook her head. “Nona may have been an astronomer, but she was all about fun. She only collected old things that she thought were extremely cool.” She reached down and picked up a strange looking instrument from a side table. “This sextant, for example. Nona told me she found it in the garbage at one of the observatories she worked in. Guess somebody thought that new technology was better, but Nona liked it, so she kept it.”

A thought suddenly struck Logan and he leapt to his feet. He returned from the front hall with the contents of his inner jacket pocket.

“Here's something you might want back,” he said, ducking his head a little as he handed her the astrolabe. “I meant to give it back earlier, but —”

“Logan!” she said, clearly ecstatic. “Where did you find it?”

He was tempted to make something up — like maybe he'd found it under her bed in the hospital room — but in the end, he just told the truth. “You threw it at me the night I got mad at you for hiding the laxative wrappers in my recycling,” he said.

She laughed a little. “Author of my own misfortune, I guess. I was past rational thinking at that point — just throwing anything to get you to stop talking. To stop reminding me of the things I do wrong.”

“But I…”

“I know. You were just saying what you thought was right. And it was right. But I was so sick of always being handled, Logan. Blood pressure cuff. Temperature. Heart rate monitor. Gastric tube. Intravenous drip. You must know what I mean, you've been there, too. I just wanted them to leave me alone. When the feeding tube came out I thought I would be free of them for at least part of the time. But Medusa was measuring my food output. Do you know what that means?”

Logan was silent a moment, watching Cleo running her fingers over the small metal astrolabe. “I guess it means you thought she deserved to find a little dog shit in the toilet.”

Cleo grinned. “Exactly.”

A candle flickered from inside a jam jar and reflected off the polished surface of the old dining table.

“Nona would have liked this,” Cleo said. “She loved spontaneity.”

Logan looked across at her and grinned. “What would she have thought about the menu?”

The table was not exactly groaning under the weight of a feast. A quick search through Nona's pantry yielded little that either of them was either interested in or able to eat. So, they drank tea, ate toast, and Cleo splurged on a spoonful of peanut butter.

“I've given up barfing,” she said conversationally.

Logan grinned, not put off in the least from his dinner. “How do you know?” he asked. “Maybe as soon as you get back around the skinny chick at school or your sister you'll want to start again.”

“No,” she said firmly, chewing her toast. “I decided last night. After the cab let me off at the rest home, I hiked over and hid in the bathroom of the community centre. Sitting with my feet up on the toilet until they shut off the lights gave me a chance to think.”

“Good place for thinking, toilets,” Logan said.

“Not for me. I usually spend my time in the washroom trying not to think about what I am doing.” She took a sip of tea. “Anyway, I really do want to try to have more fun in my life. Not like Adine and her rainbow-party kind of fun. I want to be more like Nona — the one I remember, not the one I saw today. I need to get rid of some of the crappy stuff from my past. Including throwing up every time I eat.”

Logan was silent a moment, thinking. “I still don't really get it, you know.”

“Get what? The barfing?”

“Yeah — well, that and everything else. I mean, look at you; you are a beautiful girl. Or you would be if you had a little meat on your bones.” He ignored Cleo's glare and stumbled on, determined to finish what he'd set out to say. “It's just been really hard for me, y'know. Watching you starve yourself — for the sake of what? Did it make you smarter or better than anyone else? Did it make you happier?”

Cleo dropped her eyes.

“No, it didn't make me happier. It just sort of took hold of me. I couldn't think of anything else. It was like, if I controlled the food, it meant I would look great and everything else would be all right.”

“Uh, I hate to break it to you, but you don't look great with your bones sticking through your skin.”

She glared at him across the table. “Okay, I just said I'd given up being sick. I've figured it out, all right?”

Logan reached across the table and touched her arm. Cleo stiffened, but finally let him take her hand in his.

“I don't think you have got it all figured out,” he said quietly. “But the reason I came to find you was to let you know that if you need a little support along the way, I'm here.”

Cleo looked at him a long time, her eyes large in the candlelight. Logan steeled himself for the usual verbal onslaught when she finally opened her mouth, but instead of the whole chain of excuses he expected to hear, all she said was “Thanks.”

Logan woke as the first light of dawn crept through Nona's lace curtains. He pulled himself up off the couch, grateful for its comfort after the bench of the night before. They'd sat for hours after dinner, just talking and looking out the window at the stars. Cleo had shown him how to use the astrolabe and the sextant. He'd told her about his decision to try for a job as volunteer coach for the rugby squad at the middle school next year. They had both expected the police or her parents to show up — but nothing. Not even a phone call. He didn't remember falling asleep, but this morning, somehow he felt completely rested for the first time in months.

He could hear Cleo in the kitchen, knocking dishes
together and splashing. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Logan!”

Cleo's voice was muffled from the distance, but there was no mistaking her urgency. Logan jumped up, instantly alert, and ran through the doorway. “What is it?”

He found her standing in the pristine kitchen, all blue and white cheerfulness in the morning light. Cleo stood beside the countertop, a strange look on her face. On the counter was Abbie's notebook, open to the last page. And in her hand was a small, white envelope.

“What is it?” Logan repeated, striding over to stand beside her.

“I must have missed it in the dark last night,” she said. “I think it's a note — to me.”

“Uh, did you pick that up from the fact that it has ‘CLEO' written on it in huge letters?”

“Okay, Mr. Smarty-pants. It's just… she said yesterday she'd left me something, remember? When I was talking to her in the nursing home.”

“Cleo, by the time I got there, you were holding hands with an ex-grandmother.”

She glared at him and turned the envelope over in her hands.

“Words from the dead. That's a bit creepy, isn't it?” he muttered.

“Thank you, Mister Sensitivity,” she said flatly.

“Maybe I should just read it.”

“Good idea.”

She opened the small envelope and pulled out a heavily folded piece of paper. As she undid the first fold, a silver key fell out and clattered onto the countertop. It was attached to a thin chain with a tiny car on it. Logan slapped his hand on the key to stop it sliding to the floor.