You Are My Only (8 page)

“Sure is. Here. Have another.”

The custard's the color of eggs and milk browned over by spice. Miss Cloris baked it and set it to cool inside a dozen dishes, each one no bigger than my palm. I could eat custard all day. I could take a bath in it. Miss Cloris blows a soft whistle up through the puffy parts of her hair and asks me to tell her about Kepler. I pause and think, recite the essay's first sentence. She whistles again, closes her eyes.

“‘Johannes Kepler was born with the skies in his eyes,' ” she repeats. “You wrote that yourself?”

I nod.

“Didn't find it in a book somewhere?”

I shake my head no.

“You know what we call that, don't you?”

“What?”

“We call that talent. Here,” she says. “Have another custard.”

I feel my face go red and dig my spoon in deep and let the sweet smooth taste cover my tongue. “Miss Helen's recipe,” Miss Cloris says.

“Where is Miss Helen?”

“Coming to us when she's ready, as she does.”

“She isn't ready?”

“Miss Helen needs her rest, God be blessing Miss Helen.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

On the floor, at my feet, Harvey yips. He knocks his tail against the linoleum tile and lets his tongue fall free. Miss Cloris says Harvey is not a fan of custard. She's got him busy with a bone. “So what's next?” she asks. “After your first sentence?”

“ ‘He was born looking up so he could see.' ”

“Is that a fact?”

“It could have been.”

“My word,” Miss Cloris says, licking her own custard spoon. “Your mother has some Kepler coming. When does she get home?”

“Around five o'clock.”

“How much more essay writing are you planning on?”

“Some.”

“We're not here to interfere with your learning, Sophie.”

“You're not, Miss Cloris—I promise.”

I look away from her and around the room, take notice of the pictures on the high parts of the walls—painted cardboard cutouts inside boxes. It's Alice big and small. The Queen of Hearts. The White Rabbit. The Walrus and the falling Humpty Dumpty. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

“My Wonderland dioramas,” Miss Cloris explains without me asking. “It's a bit of a fetish.”

“Did you make them?”

“I did not. That would be Miss Helen's talent.”

“She makes Wonderland pictures?”

“It's been a long time, dear. But yes, she once did. That's the story of us, as a matter of fact. I met Miss Helen at her Wonderland booth at a country crafts fair. I couldn't take my eyes off her dioramas.”

“I thought you were sisters,” I say, confused. “Aunt and aunt?”

“we're Joey's aunts,” Miss Cloris says. “But that doesn't mean we're sisters. Here. Let me show you something.” She pushes back from the table and walks across the room. She pulls a picture from the wall, a pencil drawing, brings it to me, sits down again.

“That you?” I ask.

“It was.”

“With eyes like that? That hair?”

“Time washes over, changes the look of things. But that's not the point I was making. My point was, Miss Helen drew this. Miss Helen is an artist. Was when I met her and always had been. I fell for her Wonderland dioramas.”

I nod, confused, and Miss Cloris's face gets far away—the look in her eyes, the smile not for me. “You ever been to Wonderland?” she asks me now.

“No, ma'am,” I say.

“Don't deny yourself, you hear me?”

She is looking past me now, over my shoulder, and I turn, too, to the creak of Miss Helen's bamboo wheelchair, which Miss Helen with her own strength is rolling forward, her hands on the thin rubber wheels. She comes from the sky room down the hall. When she gets close enough to the kitchen table, she lifts her arms, like one of those flopping puppets my mother used to parade across the ledge of the couch in whatever rooms we then were living.

“Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?” Miss Cloris says, standing now to wheel Miss Helen the rest of the way in, to the table. Harvey lifts his head and yips, then settles his jaw back onto his front paws.

“I'm afraid I overslept the party.”

“Not at all,” Miss Cloris says. “The custard had to set. And Sophie just got here, besides.” She finds a spoon for Miss Helen, hands her a bowl of custard. She stands there hovering and won't sit down until Miss Helen has her first taste of the stuff.

“Heaven on earth,” Miss Helen says, swallowing slowly. “I thank you for it.” She's wearing a pale-peach dress with a scooped round neck and sleeves that come down just past her shoulders and that hair, which is a long, smooth sameness of white. It's her hands I notice, art-making hands, younger than the rest of her.

“Our newest neighbor has been writing on Kepler,” Miss Cloris says now.

“Is that right?”

“Writing like a poet, might I add.”

“I would have guessed that.”

“Tell her your first sentence, Sophie,” Miss Cloris urges. “Don't be shy.” And when I repeat myself a second time, Miss Helen closes her eyes and smiles.

“Oh my,” she says, “you fit right in here. How in the world did you get yourself on Kepler?”

“By way of the Archimedean solids,” I say, but when Miss Helen and Miss Cloris exchange funny glances, I trade my answer for another. “By way of my mother,” I say. “She has a thing for Kepler.”

“And right she should,” Miss Cloris says. “He was a smart man.”

“Also Imperial,” I say.

“Is that a fact?”

“That's an actual fact,” I assure them.

“We like facts of all kinds.” Miss Helen smiles. She's eaten halfway through her cup of custard and stopped. Miss Cloris has been watching her, and now I watch her watch.

“Eat a little more now, Helen,” she tells her. “For strength.”

“I'm afraid I'm already full.”

“Honey,” Miss Cloris says, “do it for me,” and slow but sweet, Miss Helen obliges—lifts the spoon to the O of her mouth and takes a long time swallowing. “Custard's good for the soul,” Miss Cloris tells her.

“And delicious,” Miss Helen says. “Absolutely.” The words come out like the back end of a sigh. She puts her spoon down and Harvey yawns. “You bad old dog,” she says in a loving voice. She closes her eyes but doesn't close her smile. Miss Cloris fits her hand over hers.

“I best be going,” I say now, standing, remembering my mother's Kepler and her rules, and thinking how Miss Helen needs Miss Cloris to coax her through another custard or two, and how I should not be here. Harvey raises his eyebrows at me but doesn't yip. Miss Helen says I should stay until Joey gets home, but I'm decided. Around the table I go, to give Miss Helen a kiss. I let Miss Cloris walk me through to the door.

“She'll be all right,” Miss Cloris says, as if I asked her.

“I know,” I say, but I don't.

“You write your heart out on Kepler,” Miss Cloris says, “and return with the news.”

“I'll do what I can,” I say. “That's my best method.”

A room that isn't mine. The sound of toss and dream, and sheets like the fried bottom of a pan. At the far end of the room, in a square: sun like it's been poured into a glass of milk and swallowed—a blank face in a square space of scratch and rake and air clot. I will be smothering down to nothing.

Fix it, Emmy. Think. Remember.

A woman with a white skirt whishing. Train eyes on the train tracks, coming. The rain coming down, and I am rescued. In the back of a car, in a room with a bulb—bare and too bright and banging, and the bulb is swinging, it is blinding, and who is the man asking questions? The two men? Peter? Is Peter asking questions?

“Nothing you have done can be explained.”

Someone has Baby.

Nothing you have done.

What have I done? Another room, another man. A flapping blue jacket.

“You were never right in the head.”

Where is Baby?

Book says it's right to love your baby.

“Shouldn't have married you for pity, like I done.”

“You married me for my cake.”

“Married you for your cake? You see how it is, Your Honor? Your ears bear witness? My wife is wrong in the head. She's crazy.”

“Order in the court. Order, please. Mr. Rane, you keep your fists down.”

The white skirt whishing.

“Mrs. Rane.”

“I'm Mrs. Rane.”

“For your own good.”

“For my own good, what?”

“Order in the court!”

Who'll look for Baby?

“I hereby declare …”

Declare?

“… in light of her breakdown …”

Whose breakdown?

“… or until otherwise remediated.”

Thirteen steps up, thirteen steps down, and the dogs barking. What is a mother's first rule? What is? What is? What is?

The man and the world on his handlebars.

Speed and hurry.

Release me. I have done nothing.

I hear the old Volvo pull up along the street curb and stop, the key turn and the motor flop, the car still chugging. Now the car door slams, and she's dragging her feet up the walk, past the acorn splat, pulling her worst knee after her bad one and jumping the keys on the ring in her hand until she finds the one that fits the door, which I locked myself when I came back home, too early for Joey, in time for Kepler, the good daughter I am, the be-gooder.

“Sophie?” she calls, and I hurry to relieve her of the weight of the Styrofoam boxes she's carried in from the diner. “Turkey meat loaf,” she says. “Garlic potatoes.” There's heat in them still.

“Not bad,” I tell her, like she cooked them herself.

“A little bit of luck, I'd call it, if I hadn't worked so hard to earn it.”

“I'll put them in the oven,” I say. “Keep them warm.”

She heads for the La-Z-Boy, lowers herself in. She levers the footstool, fits her head inside the leatherette wedge. When I return from the kitchen, her eyes are closed, and there's the sound of a far-off train in her nose. I wait for her eyes to open, for the chance to say,
I wrote you a perfection ode to Kepler.
I wait for something. Nothing. I say, “Mother” gently, and her eyes stay closed. I head for the stairs, walk the outside parts, where there's hardly any squeak, leaving the meat loaf and the potatoes in the cold cave of the oven.

“Did you make it up to me?” she asks now, talk from her sleep.

“I did.”

“Dinner in an hour,” she mumbles.

But the train rolls on, high speed.

A wheeled chair at the end of the bed. One woman, then another coming. “Six weeks for the ankle,” the one says, leaning in, snapping the spring on the clipboard someone tied—how long ago?—to the metal post of this bed. “A month for the arm. You've banged yourself good.” She goes away and she comes back—teeth straight as boxcars, hair chopped off at the ears, high egg of a head. Her eyes are like hyphens between the broken part of words. Her nose is a man's nose, the wrong kind.

“What's the wheels for?” I ask now, my voice crunchy.

“For taking a ride in,” she says. Leaves the clipboard hanging from its string, leans in over the foot end of my bed, snaps the sheets off my legs. The dust goes for a crazy swim over the bare bones of all the others, over their glass bottles and their feeding tubes, their sour pans, their sheets thrown to the floor, their moaning, a sound like a tunnel through my ears. Days now. Weeks? How long?

When the tall one smiles, her mouth makes an upside-down U and the blonde beside her smiles, too, except that her smile goes side to side and stops short. “Scoot along, now,” the blonde says, and now she says it again, as if I don't understand
scoot
, and they both of them reach in and pinch me up under my arms, scrunch me toward them.

“What are you doing?” I demand. “Leave me be!” But they are busy—hauling and pinching and lifting, and the chair rides on the wheels. “Won't do you any good, this fighting,” the tall one says. My eyes go in and out of blur. My head is dizzy. When I'm into the chair, they turn me, and I am going to be sick, the way I once was sick on the up-down swirl of a merry-go-round.

I hear the sounds of tossed sheets, and moans. I hear the ricochet of words across this room that is bed after bed after bed, and the milk light is streaming through. It's the blonde who makes the wheeled chair move beneath me, who takes me bump bump bump over the broken tiles of the floor, my bones breaking all over again at each slam and pop.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

“To privileges,” the blonde says. As if she says that every day. As if it means something.

“Privileges?”

“That's right?”

“What's privileges look like?”

“A room with a door.”

“What kind of room doesn't have a door?”

They laugh above my head. Ha, ha. The other one, the bigger one, stops laughing. “You earn your privileges,” she tells me. “You earn them, or you lose them. Privileges is obeying. It is excellent good behavior.”

Excellent good? What is excellent good? One of the wheels on this chair is a flat squat lump. The chair goes bump bump bump, and my ankle's angry. The stitch up my arm feels like a lit stick of something. We're through the door of the long room and out into a hall, and the hall is longer than the long room was and the ceiling is low and the bulbs are orange. On either side of the hall are benches, and from the benches murmurs mist, and down the hall, a thin man with a pail mops dirty water into a corner, smelling like lemon and bleach.

“You understand, Emmy?” the blonde one asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Privileges is obeying.”

“Morning, Miss Granger,” the mop man says.

“Morning, Julius,” the tall one with the egg head says.

“Morning, Bettina.”

“That's a nice shine you're putting onto the floor,” Bettina answers.

The hallway is linoleum, a used-up yellow. The tiles go bump. The women walking or waiting or sleeping on the benches wear their dresses loose at their shoulders, their hair in knots. Now with my good arm and hand I reach up to touch my own, to smooth it down. I wear the same dress as the rest of them. I wear it pale blue and thin, and I wonder where my Levis are, where my comb is, Baby's sock. “Tell me the what for,” I say.

“Excuse me?” the one called Granger answers.

“Whose rules? What country?”

“You'll get the hang of it,” Bettina says, as if I'm to get used to this, like this is not some mistake, as if Baby isn't out there, waiting for me, trusting me to find her. I feel the swimmy whoosh like the early days of Baby being tucked inside. “I'm going to be sick,” I say. The bad tire goes smack against the upped tile of a linoleum block and my ankle bangs.

“If you were well,” Granger says, “you wouldn't be here.”

“I mean it,” I say, but Granger pulls a file from her pocket. Rounds a nail, chews back its flesh.

The moon is shrinking. The stars lie low above the thread of clouds. Cicadas talk in the grass and the crows rustle and Mother never woke to my Kepler.

“Mother?” I asked. “Mom?”

“Tomorrow,” she mumbled, and now, looking out on the dark of the world, I remember afternoons when I made my mother happy, when we were safe again, in another new house, when the No Good couldn't find us. We cut dolls from doilies and pasted them on sticks, and it would be her turn first, and then it would be mine, to tell our most magnificent stories. My stories were sister stories. Her stories were adventures. Her life as a barracuda hunter. Her rocket rides to the moon. The year she lived with a giraffe in her pantry and an elephant in her living room. Back then her hobble was a small hobble and her hair was like a paintbrush run against my skin when she leaned in close to play.

“Mother,” I tried again. “I finished the Kepler.”

“It should be good,” she said. “Is it good?”

“It's for you.”

“we'll let it sit, then,” she said. “Until tomorrow.”

In the house across the alley, at the kitchen table, Miss Cloris sits with a violet apron on, and Joey feeds Harvey with his fingers, and I can't see Miss Helen but I know that she's there, from the way Miss Cloris bends and leans, lifting Minxy from the floor with the jiggling O of her arms and setting her down on a wheelchaired pair of knees. Joey's cap fights the curls on his head. He wears his shoes untied and his shorts loose, and it's homework he's working over, books he turns the pages of while he feeds Harvey with his fingers. If he would just turn around, he would see me.

Joey. Turn around and see me.

But now Harvey has jumped his two front paws to Joey's knees. He's running his tongue along the shelf of Joey's chin, scrambling his back paws across the tile floor as if he's trying to jump them, too, as if he's a lap-size Minxy. Joey closes his book and makes room. He reaches down and scruffs Harvey's fur, and suddenly the big dog's there, king of the kitchen table, yelping so proud and loud that even from here I can hear him.