by Keziah Frost
Norbert folded his arms and smiled, and he raised his eyebrows at Lorraine in a gesture of mutual enjoyment. Lorraine jutted her chin at him with the beginning of a smile, and turned her attention back to Mabel. Carlotta felt provoked.
“So the little nun goes off to the cloister, and at the end of another year, she’s back with the Mother Superior. This time, she says, ‘Food lousy,’ and the Mother Superior says, ‘OK.’ Then another year goes by. On the third anniversary, the nun comes back. She says to the Mother Superior, ‘I quit!’ And the Mother Superior says—get this— ‘I’m not surprised. You’ve done nothing but complain ever since you got here!’”
The room erupted in laughter, with Margaret laughing the longest.
Then Margaret wrinkled her brow and said, “Wait. What?”
Mabel repeated the punchline.
Unsure, Margaret said, “Oh! I get it!” and laughed again. But Carlotta knew the joke had gone over poor Margaret’s head.
Mabel was lit up with pleasure at the success of her joke.
“You’re a good crowd. I can’t say you aren’t.”
“Oh, Mabel,” cooed Carlotta in a voice that was meant to be amused and amusing, “Honestly! Anyone who loves attention as much as you do should be on stage!”
“Well, I—.”
“Or a psychiatrist’s couch!”
Carlotta looked around to see if her joke had been as successful as Mabel’s.
It had not.
-66-
Summer, rushing home from work to get ready for a date with her Jack of Hearts, blew into the Good Fortune Café with a gust of leaves, just for a quick chat with her cousin Hope. She wanted to advise Hope to send Queen back to Children and Family Services.
Hope greeted Summer with a hug and a kiss.
“Hey, kiddo! What can I get for you?”
“Nothing, really. Nothing at all. I just wanted to stop in and have a word with you.”
“Oh.” Hope lowered her voice. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you about Queen. Well really, about your whole foster child idea. I’ve been thinking. I just wonder if you’ve really thought through all the long-term consequences.”
Summer’s bright eyes were blue flecked with brown, giving the impression that when the freckles were spattered across her cheeks, some of the spatter got into her irises as well. The wrinkle between her eyebrows gave the impression of earnest worry.
“What? What’s gotten into you? You were my biggest supporter!”
“Yes, I know, but, well, Gramma mentioned something to me.”
“Oh.” Hope felt disappointed in Carlotta. “She told you about the wallet?”
“What? No! Whose wallet? She didn’t….”
“Oh, no, it was nothing. What did you hear?”
“Gramma told me,” Summer looked around to be sure no one was close enough to be listening, “that Queen’s mother is in prison. Is that true?”
Hope sighed.
“I didn’t want everyone to know about that right away. I wanted people to get to know Queen first, before getting that image in their brains. But I guess Queen went ahead and spilled the beans.”
“Hope. Seriously.” Summer lowered her chin and looked Hope in the eye.
“What?” said Hope, folding her arms. “Didn’t you expect that the mother of a foster child would be in some extreme situation? Or did you think she might just be away on a long cruise, or something?”
“You’re trying to make light of it, Hope. It’s not a light thing. And what is the hurry? You’re just rushing headlong into this huge commitment. I thought adoptions take a long time. How can this be moving along so fast?”
“First of all, I’ve never been more serious in my life, so you’re wrong: I’m not making light of it. Not at all. Secondly, it’s helped that her birth mom has already signed over her rights. The sooner I can make the adoption final, the sooner Queen will have the stability she needs.”
“Hope, think! If her mom’s in prison, that means she committed a crime. Do you even know what the crime is? Did she murder someone? She probably has relatives who are—I don’t even know. They might drop by your house some time. Have you pictured that? You’re a business owner. They could think you have money. Something bad could happen to you. If you adopt her, you are forever connecting your life to the lives of people who—.”
“You know what, Summer? Our lives are already connected. Reach out with love, or don’t reach out with love—either way, we all live in this world, and our paths cross, and we affect each other. Like it or not, we are all connected.”
“Wow. Really? That’s something Aunt Birdie would say, we are all connected. Airy fairy stuff. This is the real world, Hope. You are putting yourself in danger by getting involved with this kid.”
“What has happened to you, Summer? That day at Aunt Carlotta’s, you were all about it. Was that just because you wanted to tease Aunt Carlotta? Why would you change like this?”
“Well, maybe it was fun to poke at the matriarch a little bit.” Summer’s eyes twinkled with the memory. “But the truth is, the reality of it didn’t hit me at the time. I didn’t know about the prison thing. I didn’t think that there might be adults that could come into the picture along with the kid. This is a huge risk. I mean, it was one thing to talk about it. It’s another thing when the kid is here, in the flesh, and you stop and think of all the baggage that comes with her.”
“Summer, for someone so young, you worry an awful lot. Thanks for your concern. Now I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”
Summer said, “I’m just….”
“Stop.”
Summer opened her mouth, but Hope put up her hand.
“No more. I mean it.”
Norbert and Queen entered the café, deep in discussion.
“I don’t read for children,” said Norbert. He had already repeated this sentence several times.
“But why not?” countered Queen.
“Because it’s not helpful or appropriate for children. Adults have decisions to make, warnings to heed; adults have grown-up worries—and they come to the cards for help with their responsibilities.”
“Are you saying that adults need more help than children?”
It was strange to be challenged by such a small child, and yet Norbert felt she was asking because she needed to know.
“I’m saying that children don’t have the power to make any decisions or heed any warnings. Children just have to do what adults tell them, and deal with adults’ decisions. I’m not saying it’s fair, but that’s the way things are—so there’s no point in reading cards for children. Do you see?”
“Ooh. Now that makes me mad, Mr. Zelenka. I decide things every day. Every day. I wake up in the morning and decide what I’m gonna do. I decide lots of stuff. And worries? Looks like you forgot the worries you had, when you were a kid.”
Hope set down a falafel wrap and glass of peach mango juice for Queen.
“Mr. Zelenka,” said Hope with a wink, “did you know our Queen is a lawyer-in-training?”
Norbert sighed, vanquished. “How would you feel about me reading Queen’s cards for her today?”
“As long as you give her the best reading you’ve ever given anyone yet, well, I would feel fine about it.”
Norbert let Queen hand him cards and he set them out on the table between them.
Queen was delighted and then suspicious as Norbert enumerated the many blessings that lay in store for her. Yes, she would get good grades in the new school year. Yes, she would go to college. Yes, she would be the author of many books someday. Yes, she would live a long and healthy life. Yes, when she grew up she would have enough money to buy her birth mother a house and a car.
“How do I know you’re not making all this up?” she demanded.
“I’m not making it up. I use a very special method. It’s called the Self-fulfilling Prophecy Method.”
Queen was listening with folded a
rms.
Norbert explained, “I give you a good reading, and you will make it come true. That’s how it works.”
“Huh.” Queen was skeptical. “What about…” she looked over her shoulder to make sure Hope was out of ear shot. “What about Hope? Is she gonna get married or get a boyfriend? Because I’m not staying if she does.”
Norbert gathered up the cards and looked with deep attention into Queen’s eyes.
“I cannot see everything in the cards. But some things I just know. One thing I know is this: Hope is what you could call true blue. You can count on her to do what she thinks is best for you, every time.”
Queen was not a happy customer.
“I didn’t get all my questions answered,” she said with a frown, “but thank you anyway for trying, Mr. Zelenka.”
-67-
At the Art League Studio, it was just Carlotta’s Club minus Mabel today: Norbert, Lorraine, Margaret, Carlotta and Birdie meeting for Birdie’s watercolor class. Carlotta was gratified to hear the Club begin to rumble in discomfort as they painted autumn leaves. Birdie painted one huge red maple leaf that filled her Arches paper, while Lorraine painted a scattering of multicolored leaves of various specimens. Norbert’s leaves were still attached to the branch he had brought in from outside. Carlotta had made a neat little bouquet-like bundle of leaves.
So difficult to make autumn leaves look tidy.
“Well, that Mabel, you gotta hand it to her. Even at her age, she’s a partier.”
“And I can’t say she isn’t!” wisecracked Norbert, who then basked in the laughter rewarding his successful imitation.
“But I don’t feel so good today,” concluded Lorraine.
“Neither do I,” grumbled Margaret. “She’s hard to keep up with. I just can’t drink like Mabel. We look alike, but our constitution is not the same.”
Lorraine said, “We don’t want to disappoint her, and we sure don’t want to be boring, so we hit the Alibi Bar after filming, and one thing leads to another….”
Carlotta painted in silence, listening to the group make their own observations about how “keeping up with Mabel” was serving them. The old Carlotta might have made a biting remark at this point, to embarrass them. Instead, she loosened the muscles in her hand, and held her brush lightly.
How different a watercolor is, she reflected, when you hold the brush just a little more loosely. The painting has a chance to become what it wants to be.
Carlotta smiled at the nonsense in her thoughts. There is a lot of truth in nonsense. Lewis Carroll knew that. And she thought, she must bring Queen up to speed on Lewis Carroll. The Alice books were an important contribution to juvenile literature; Queen couldn’t do without them.
As Norbert and his little dog Ivy walked home from the Art League, Ivy stopped every once in a while to pounce and play with a windblown leaf as if she were a young dog again. Norbert was thinking about Mabel’s influence—on him, and on all his new friends. Mabel’s magic was that she lowered everyone’s inhibitions: in her company, everyone wanted to try new things. And she added a lightness, a sense of adventure. Norbert had begun to look for whatever was funny in life, in order to share it with Mabel, Margaret, Lorraine and Birdie. They all were doing the same. As soon as Mabel entered the room, everyone lit up with expectant smiles, and hilarity ensued.
It was possible that Mabel’s excesses were wearing the group down and becoming too much of a good thing. She was not an easy one to keep up with. And Margaret was looking tired and care-worn; sharing her apartment with Mabel seemed to be taking its toll.
Norbert saw that Carlotta had begun to change, too, since Mabel’s invasion of the group had caused Carlotta to turn her attention toward Hope’s little girl. Carlotta was becoming almost tender toward Queen. Carlotta was relaxing in some subtle way, and becoming a softer version of herself. She was growing into herself, at the age of eighty-one, as she was always meant to do.
-68-
Carlotta invited Hope and Queen out for a night of fine dining. Carlotta believed in bringing children to good restaurants to allow them to practice the rules of etiquette in public. This was one activity she remembered doing with her own boys when they were young. In fact, it was the only activity she remembered doing with them; certainly there must have been others. But it was a very long time ago. Charlie and Joey were children in the nineteen-sixties. What Carlotta remembered most about them as children were the clothes she put them in: mustard-colored jackets with wide lapels, shirts with Nehru collars, and those flared pants they used to call bell-bottoms. Oh, and black turtlenecks. She loved putting them in turtlenecks. They had protested they couldn’t breathe, and she remembered laughing. They could be so dramatic.
Hope had asked for Summer to be included in their soirée, and Carlotta easily agreed. Hope could not be happy when there was conflict with any of her loved ones, and it seemed Hope wanted to smooth things out with Summer. They’d had some kind of tiff. Why young people had to continually have personal conflicts was beyond Carlotta. Life was too short for petty grievances. Still, she supposed she had been prone to the same silliness when she was young.
Fine dining in Gibbons Corner necessarily indicated Renata’s Italian Restaurant, which was as fine as the town had to offer. Carlotta had always enjoyed the white table cloths and soft Italian background music.
Greg Thatcher, who had gone to high school with Hope, was the host. Carlotta tried to remember: hadn’t Hope dated him years ago? He led them to their table.
“I haven’t seen this young lady before,” said Greg, nodding toward Queen.
“Greg,” said Hope, “this is my foster daughter, Queen Jones. Queen, this is my old friend from high school, Greg Thatcher—Mr. Thatcher to you.”
“Hello, Mr. Thatcher,” said Queen, as Carlotta had taught her to do when being introduced to people, but she didn’t smile. She looked away from Greg, at the fresh flowers in the little bud vases on each table, and the smoky mirrors that covered the walls.
Why were Italians so fond of decorating with mirrors? Perhaps because many Italian people were so beautiful, thought Carlotta, smiling with satisfaction at having figured it out. She checked her own image briefly, and was pleased to see how trim and stylish she looked in her tea-length charcoal grey cotton knit dress. Charcoal grey never failed to be fashionable, especially with that belt at the waist, giving the essential “pop of red.” Her eyes were bright, too, and that was because she was with her girls, Hope and Summer. And Queen. Was Queen now also one of “her girls”?
As Summer, Hope, Queen and Carlotta seated themselves, Greg hovered for a moment. He whispered to Hope, “You always were the nicest person in our class. It would be just like you to take in a foster child. Not many people are as good as you are.”
Hope answered, “I’m not good to do it. I’m lucky that I get to do it.”
Queen was observing this exchange.
Hope repeated, “I’m lucky,” and smiled at Queen.
Queen’s eyes rested on Hope, and they seemed to convey some deep message. My, thought Carlotta, but this child has expressive eyes. So much goes on behind them.
Carlotta shook out her white cloth table napkin, and Queen did likewise. Carlotta perused the menu, and Queen did likewise.
Queen pointed to the big letters at the top of the menu.
“I think they spelled ‘restaurant’ wrong.”
Summer said, “That’s the Italian word for ‘restaurant,’ Queen. ‘Ristorante.’ ‘Renata’s Ristorante Italiano.’” Summer, a Spanish teacher, had an idea of how to pronounce the Italian words with authenticity.
Queen repeated the words the way Summer had said them.
“You have a good accent, young lady,” complimented Summer, looking at Queen thoughtfully.
“Gracias,” said Queen. “That’s the only Italian word I know.”
“Grazie,” corrected Summer. She launched into a quick explanation of the shared roots of the Latin languages, which Queen attended to
closely.
When the waiter came, Carlotta ordered a kale salad with mixed nuts and a roasted Bosc pear dressing for each of them. This was followed by zuppe: pasta e faggioli or “bean soup,” as Queen was delighted to learn. Next, pasta: Carlotta and Queen shared pasta with broccoli, garlic and roasted pepper.
Carlotta, Summer and Hope enjoyed a superb Cabernet sauvignon, while Queen drank cranberry juice from a wine glass, swirling it and sniffing the bouquet.
Finally, Queen was almost too full for desert, but when assorted cut fruit arrived on little flowery plates, she discovered she did still have room. Plenty of room.
At a neighboring table, two women in their fifties had been glancing over at Carlotta’s group throughout their meal. Finally, smiling in a friendly way, one of the women nodded toward Queen and said, “She’s cute as a button. I just love those little barrettes in her hair.”
“Thank you,” said Hope.
The stranger directed herself to Queen, “Which one of these pretty ladies is your mother?”
Queen lowered her chin and pointed her finger at Hope.
The stranger asked Hope, “Is the father in the picture?”
“Excuse me?” asked Hope.
“Well, sometimes they aren’t. Kids can still turn out good without a father. I really believe that.” The woman dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “Are you her real mother?”
Carlotta said, “I beg your pardon. Do we know you?”
The stranger’s companion was trying to shush her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered loudly. “The Merlot must have gone to her head. Denise! Shut up!”
As Carlotta and her girls filed out of the restaurant, Greg approached and apologized for the rudeness of the other patron.
“I heard what just happened. I’m so sorry she said that to you.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” said Hope. “It’s not your fault what people say in here.”
“No. But people should think before they talk.” Greg smiled at Queen, and then asked Hope, “So, how’d she wind up in foster care?”
