True To Form (10 page)

S
EATED NEXT TO ME ON
the airplane going home is a businessman, his head thrown back and snoring so loud I'm surprised the window isn't rattling. He got the window seat and he isn't even looking outside. But when I lean forward, I can see around him. There's nothing but clouds, but they are so grand, huge and puffed out and right
there.

I never did get to meet Darren. Cherylanne felt so bad, and I didn't want to tell her that meeting Darren was not my main goal in coming, because I thought it would make her feel worse than she already does. So I said I'd meet him next time, although probably there will not be a next time. It seems so amazing to me that I used to want to be just like her, and now I don't want to be like her at all.

I remember once when we were moving, driving across country, and it was raining so hard, the windshield wipers going fast and squeaking, and then: nothing. It stopped. I looked out the window ahead of me and it was clear. I looked out the back and there was the rain, still going. Nobody said anything, but there it was, a near miracle, a rain line, a way of seeing just where something starts, when usually you are just in the middle of it before you notice it. That's how it feels to me now, to not want to be like Cherylanne anymore. I see the line.

The businessman snorts so loud, he wakes himself up. He
moves his mouth around to unstick everything. Then he looks over at me and says, “Was I snoring, little lady?”

I smile.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“That's all right.”

“Tell you what, why don't we trade seats? I'll bet you'd like the window.”

“Okay.” We stand up and trade, and the part where we bump bodies is a little embarrassing. “Excuse me,” we both say. But then I settle in and look down the whole way home and I feel like I'm seeing the best movie ever. The clouds break and I can see little toy cars on ribbons of highways. The shine of a long, crooked river. Big square blocks of buildings, the tops of trees, dots of turquoise where people have pools. I wish I could have told Cherylanne about flying, how much I like it. How you can look at the big wing of the plane outside your window and think,
What if I were riding out there,
and give yourself the shivers. But I feel too that you can just have your own storehouse of things. Someday when I'm in math class I'll be able to pull out the memory of looking down after we had just taken off and seeing a whole flight of birds traveling across the sky, their wings moving together like they had a conductor.

When I come off the plane, I see Ginger and my father right away. Ginger hugs me and then my father does. My father does it too. It's the first time. I walk so straight and careful out to the car. I sit on my knees in the backseat and look out the rear window, my way of getting some privacy. I feel so much happiness and so much sadness. My father asks if I'm glad I went back to Texas and I say yes. In my mind, I see once more the house where we lived, only I see it from high up like I'm back on the airplane. The image grows smaller and smaller, and then it is gone. I turn around, headed for the home I have now.

I
ONCE OVERHEAD TWO WOMEN
in a restaurant talking about vacation. One was saying to the other that it just wasn't worth it. “I know what you mean,” the other woman said. “You come home and you have four times the amount of work to do.”

Now I know what they were talking about. I am doing double duty baby-sitting today: first the Randolphs, and right after that, the Wexlers. And the Wexlers are going out somewhere fancy and they won't be home until really late. The good thing is that Mrs. Wexler said if I wanted to, I could have a friend over. So Cynthia will come, and we will have Loser Girls Who Never Date Have a Party with Popcorn.

It is such a fine day, that kind that makes people in good moods. Not hot, not cold, just that perfect temperature where you can't really feel any temperature, you have to move your arm around to know you're out in the air. I find some yellow and white wildflowers growing at the base of a telephone pole and I pick a few for Mrs. Randolph. When Mr. Randolph opens the door, he notices them right away and it makes him smile. I don't think there are many men who would pay attention to flowers, but Mr. Randolph is one who does. He takes the little bouquet from me to put into water, and I head down to the bedroom.

“There she is,” Mrs. Randolph says. “How was your trip, dear?”

“It was good.”

“What's that?”

“It was good!”

“Oh, I'm glad. Traveling is wonderful; it enriches the soul. We used to go to Europe every year before I got sick. I'll show you pictures, if you like.”

“I would like to see them.”
Europe! I think, and that song comes in my head,
There's a place in France, where the women do a dance.
 . . . I kind of want to ask if there really is such a place where women dance like that, but of course that would be such a dumb question. This happens to me all the time, really, that I see or hear something and there is this raring up of a desire to know all these other things about it. Like once in art class, the teacher showed a picture by the artist Gauguin, who went to Tahiti. And she talked a little about the painting, but I wanted to know other things, too. Like, where is Tahiti, really? I can find it on the globe, but where is it
really?
Like, how does it feel to be there? And why did Gauguin go there? How did he get there? How long did it take and what did he think when he took his first step onto that land? What kind of clothes did he wear when it was just a regular day? What did he eat for breakfast, and did he have a wife and children? Where did he get his paints in Tahiti, and what did he talk about with the person he got them from? What was his favorite color? How long did he paint at a time, and what was the first thing he did with the painting when he was done? Was he short or tall? I looked him up in the encyclopedia, but of course it did not exactly answer all these things. It happens all the time that I want to ask questions like a machine gun, but I am too shy. Plus, it can be dangerous: Ask too many questions in school and you can get a reputation for being a weirdo.

I have just gotten out the supplies for Mrs. Randolph's bath when Mr. Randolph comes in with the flowers I picked, arranged in a jelly jar. He shows his wife and she acts like it's the huge bouquet of roses Miss America carries down the runway after she wins,
crying to beat the band, with her crown usually crooked. “Where are these from?” she asks, and I tell her I found them at the side of the street.

“Ah,” she says, and gets that glassed over, kind of longing look.

“It's really nice today,” I tell her. “Not hot at all. Maybe you'd like to go out.”

“Oh, I don't know. I don't know.” She looks sadly up at me.

Mr. Randolph goes out to the kitchen and I start Mrs. Randolph's bath. This is how we do it now. I do everything but the back part; then he comes and I hold her over while he does her back. He puts lotion on her at the end and she always says, “Oh, that's nice, thank you, sweetheart.” Every day.

I take off her glasses and hand her the washcloth. This part she can do—she washes her face and I wash her glasses. It makes you feel so tender to see someone wash their face with such trembling hands and then hand you back the washrag, looking up at you like they're waiting for you to grade them. You want to say, “Great! You did a good job!” but that might make them feel bad that they only get complimented now on how they wash their face. So you just smile. Sometimes Mrs. Randolph has messed up her eyebrows when she washes, and now I am comfortable enough that I can make them lie back down again.

Today, after she hands me back the washcloth, she puts her hand on my arm and says, “Tell me, Katie, do you think you could do my hair for me?”

This would be a true challenge. But I could try pin curls. I tell her yes, and she gets so happy. I guess when you are in bed all day, little things become big. “But I think we have to get you in the wheelchair for that,” I say. “We can bring you out to the kitchen and use the sprayer to wash your hair.”

“Yes, all right,” she says. “Today is good day; I think I can be up for a while.”

I am actually a little excited; I have always wanted to be a beautician
for a day. Whenever I see them in the shops, it looks so fun: ratting people's hair up, spraying when you're all done so it will stay, taking off their capes with a flourish. I will make a cape out of a sheet for Mrs. Randolph. I will make little curls all around her face. Maybe she has some makeup. We won't let Mr. Randolph see. “Before,” I will say, and send him to the store. And then when he comes back, I will show him Mrs. Randolph and say,
“After.”
Maybe we will say it together.

“We'll get you all fixed up,” I say, and I think she can read my mind because she says, “My niece sent me a new navy blue bed jacket—I think I'd like to wear it today.”

When Mr. Randolph comes to do Mrs. Randolph's back, I tell him about the plan to get her up in the wheelchair. “I don't know,” he says, quietly. “Last time didn't go so well.”

One thing about people who don't hear well is sometimes they all of a sudden do. “Now, Henry,” she says. “We mustn't let one bad day ruin all the rest. I want to get up so Katie can wash my hair. In fact, if it's not hot out, I might just go outside.”

“Well!” Mr. Randolph raises his eyebrows and winks at me. Sometimes I feel like we are the parents and she is our child, and it is so cute. Probably sometimes she feels like that too. And then it's not so cute. She was a librarian, she told me last time. And he was a teacher. Imagine if she were twenty-one and standing in the stacks in that beautiful churchy light of libraries, and someone came up and said, “You'll end up bedridden. Your husband and a teenager will help you get washed every day.” I guess it's good we don't know our own futures.

“We still read together,” Mrs. Randolph told me that day. “I do one page, Henry does the next.”

“Do you ever read poetry?” I asked, and she said, “Oh, my,
yes.”
My brain jerked its head up and tried to say, Hey, why don't you bring her some of your poems? but I wouldn't let it.

M
RS
. R
ANDOLPH LOOKS BEAUTIFUL
, if I do say so myself. After we got her hair washed, Mr. Randolph went out for groceries. He'll be so surprised when he gets back. I put up Mrs. Randolph's hair with bobby pins, and since it's so thin, it dried right away. I made little curls all around the side of her face just like I dreamed of and ratted up the back just a little for height. We found some rouge and lipstick in her dresser drawer, and an old cake type of mascara with the little brush. It is one thing to put makeup on yourself, and another thing altogether to put it on someone else. It took me a few times, and thank goodness she had cleansing cream to wipe off my mistakes. One thing Mrs. Randolph still has are the most beautiful blue eyes, a dark blue that I have never seen before. And with the new bed jacket, they were even better. When I was all done and showed her in the mirror, she said,
Oh my!
and laughed, so I think she likes how she looks.

“How about we wait for your husband outside on the porch?” I say.

Mrs. Randolph puts her hand up to her throat, thinks for a minute. Then she nods and says, “Yes. I would like that.”

As soon as we get outside, Mrs. Randolph gets very quiet. I think she is just taking in the wide world that she hasn't seen for a long time. “Well, you're right, it is a very nice day,” she says. “My goodness. Birds.”

And now here comes Mr. Randolph pulling up to the curb and getting out of the car with his bag of groceries. He stops about halfway up the sidewalk and just stares at his wife.

“Hello, Henry,” Mrs. Randolph says. She may be in her eighties, and he may have been her husband for a long, long time, but she is flirting. And her husband is a dead duck. He just keeps looking, and then he comes up slow and kisses his wife on the forehead. “Let me just get the groceries in and I'll come out here and sit with you,” he says. “I'll be right back.”

As soon as he goes in, Mrs. Randolph turns to me and smiles. “He likes how I look,” she says, and I say, Yes. She raises one of her trembly hands to feel the curls at the side of her face. And then, “You know, I might not mind a little ride around the block.”

“Okay,” I say. “I'll go tell your husband. Are you all right out here alone for a minute?”

“I'm just fine.”

I go inside to ask Mr. Randolph if he would like to come and I am so surprised to find him sitting at the kitchen table, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.

I walk slowly up to him. “Mr. Randolph?”

He stops right away and looks up, embarrassed.

“Are you okay?”

“It's nothing,” he says, and then, “She's such a beautiful woman, Katie, isn't she?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Inside and out, all her life.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he says, “People will tell you not to get old. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“Well, they will, believe me. Someone will one day say that very thing to you. But don't you believe them. Because every day,
no matter what, there's something that . . . especially if . . . ” He stops, smiles. “Well, I guess I just can't say it.”

“I know what you mean, though,” I say.

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

For a moment, I get nervous that he'll want me to explain. But he doesn't. He understands that the truest things are spoken in silence.

M
RS
. W
EXLER IS DRESSED TO THE
nines, which is what they say, although I don't get it. She's in a floor-length turquoise formal, little circles of rhinestones at each shoulder. Her hair is up high on her head, and she wears blue eye shadow to match the dress. Her purse is turquoise too, shaped like a long envelope, and it has a rhinestone clasp. But her face is tight and unhappy. “Come with me, Katie,” she says, and I follow her on her blue high heels into the kitchen.