“Grandpa’s dead?”
“Yes, honey. I would have notified—”
“Aw, shit!”
“Shame on you, using such language. I know this is a shock, but—”
“You don’t know the half of it; I got no place else to stay.”
Olivia misunderstanding the meaning of his statement, said, “You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll call your mama to come pick you up.”
“You can’t call Mama, ‘less you got a telephone that reaches up to heaven.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lady, my mama’s dead!”
“Well then, who brought you here? Your daddy?”
“Nobody brought me. I hitched.”
“Well then, I’m sure your daddy is quite worried about you.”
“No he ain’t. It breaks my heart to have to tell you this,” Ethan Allen said, sarcastically mimicking Olivia’s words, “but, my daddy’s dead too.”
Olivia clutched her chest in such a way you’d wonder if she was headed down the same pathway. “Who then,” she gasped, “…is taking care of you?”
“Nobody,” he answered. “I was figuring to stay with Grandpa, but if he’s dead, I suppose I gotta find someplace else.”
“Maybe another relative?” she asked hopefully.
Ethan Allen shook his head, “There ain’t no other relatives.”
It seemed to Olivia some days were simply too long and troublesome for their own good. When days like that happened along, a person should give up and toddle off to bed, forget about that day and start over again in the morning; which is precisely what she decided to do. She folded a bath towel for the dog to sleep on and fixed the boy a place on the sofa; then she poured herself a full glass of sherry and carried it into the bedroom.
Long about midnight, the hooting of a night owl set the dog to barking loud enough to wake the people in downtown Wyattsville. Olivia, sound asleep by then, leaped from the bed in a panic and went running to the living room. “Shush,” she shouted at the dog, in a voice louder than the barking. “There’s no dogs allowed in this building! Don’t you understand that—no dogs!” Olivia knew that having a pet was something the residents of the Wyattsville Arms Apartment Building would not tolerate. Why, just two months ago a man on the ninth floor had been sent packing because of his cat—a cat that mewed in a barely audible voice and didn’t poop outside on the lawn. She gave the boy’s shoulder a shake and pleaded for him to get up and take control of the dog.
Unfortunately, Ethan was not one to be easily woken, so he cracked an eyelid then rolled over and went back to sleep leaving Olivia to deal with the situation as she would. “Go back to bed,” she said, pointing a finger at the folded towel. The dog didn’t budge, just sat there grumbling like he had a bark stuck in his throat. “Go on,” Olivia repeated trying to sound authoritative, but the dog, unimpressed, turned in the opposite direction and trotted over to the window. “Not there,” Olivia shouted, but before she could yank the dog back, he began barking again.
After being bribed with two slices of ham, three shortbread cookies, and a bowl of warm milk, the dog finally curled up on the towel. Olivia waited for a full fifteen minutes to make certain he was going to stay there; then she stumbled back to her own bed. Of course, sleep was nigh on to impossible, so she lay there staring up at the ceiling and picturing the eviction notice that was sure to be slid under her door before morning.
Although certain she wouldn’t catch a single wink, she did at some point doze off and by the time she opened her eyes the sun was well into the sky. Pushing off a residue of drowsiness, she pulled on a bathrobe and hurried into the living room. Both boy and dog were gone. The blankets lay in crumpled heap at one end of the sofa, the folded towel was still on the floor. She walked into the kitchen—the counter was exactly as she’d left it the night before, no dirty dishes, no used glasses. The boy had obviously gone off without a bite in his stomach, without even a glass of milk to tide him over.
“Oh dear,” Olivia sighed, knowing that she, of all people, should understand the feeling of being alone and having no family to speak of. She thought back to the September morning when she walked out of her parent’s house; she could still picture her father standing on the front porch, arms akimbo. If you go, you’re on your own, he’d hollered, don’t come back here looking for help, then before she reached the end of the walkway, he’d turned back inside the house and slammed the door behind him. Of course, she was seventeen years old at the time, a grown woman capable of making her own way in life—this poor boy looked to be eight or nine, maybe ten at the most. Olivia felt a lasso of guilt knotting itself around her heart. She’d always considered herself a Christian woman, yet last night she’d lain in bed wishing she’d never set eyes on either the boy or his dog.
With a sprig of regret taking root inside of her, Olivia returned to the living room and began folding the blankets. “He’s Charlie’s grandson,” she muttered to herself, “his grandson! Whether or not, I’ve any love of children, I should have seen to the lad having a place to go and some way to get there.” Long about the time Olivia began believing Charlie’s ghost would be back to haunt her, the doorbell chimed.
“Sorry,” the boy said, “I forgot to leave the lock open.”
“Oh,” Olivia answered, already forgetting the guilt connected to him being Charlie’s grandson, “I thought you’d gone.”
“Gone where?” he asked as he tromped through to the kitchen, leaving a trail of dirty footprints behind. “I don’t exactly have no place else to go.”
“Oh, right.” She poured a glass of milk and handed it to him. “Don’t worry,” she said, offering solace to herself as much as to the boy, “we’ll work it out. There’s got to be someone who’d be real anxious to have you come stay with them—a blood relative on your mama’s side maybe.”
Trying to remember her thoughts of being a bit more charitable to what was surely the last of Charlie’s kin, Olivia turned to fixing breakfast. “What would you like to eat she asked, forcing herself to give off the sound of cheerfulness. “Eggs and bacon? Cereal? French toast, maybe?”
“You got any potato chips?”
“Well yes, but not for breakfast.”
“Why not?” Ethan Allen asked.
“Because it’s not proper breakfast food. Why, there’s not an ounce of nutrition –”
“Mama says potato chips is a fine breakfast.”
“I’m not your mama!” Olivia snapped. But before a half-second had passed she regretted making such a comment to the motherless boy. “Well now,” she sighed in a voice sweet as sugar cane, “…will you just listen to me; acting grumpy when I ought to be thinking about our breakfast. Let’s see now, I could fix us a scrambled egg omelet with some potato chips alongside of it, how’s that sound?”
“Okay,” he shrugged, “but far as I’m concerned you can skip the omelet.”
By the time Olivia cooked up an omelet and set it in front of the boy, she was wishing she’d never married Charlie Doyle. Of course, she could wish from now till doomsday and it wouldn’t change a thing, she simply had to focus on what it was she could do with this boy and his mangy-haired dog. Olivia knew for a fact, Charlie had no brothers or sisters, and the woman who fathered his son had died some thirty years ago, which left only the maternal side of Ethan’s family. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. “So,” she said, “are you acquainted with any of your mama’s relatives?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know that she had any.”
“Surely there were some. Sisters maybe, or brothers?”
Ethan, now busy slicing the omelet into pieces for Dog, simply shrugged unknowingly then lowered his plate to the floor.
“Well, maybe if you tell me your mama’s maiden name and where she came from, I could locate somebody…”
“Mama?” he laughed, “Nobody knew where mama came from. According to her way of telling it, she crawled out from under a rose
bush.”
“That’s no way to talk about your mama!”
“It ain’t me what said it! Shit, Mama’s the one—”
“Stop that cussing!” Olivia commanded. “An eight year old using such language, why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“I ain’t eight.”
“Well, excuse me! What are you then,” she asked flippantly, “nine?”
“No,” he answered, rolling his eyes like people do when they’ve heard something that’s beyond believing, “I’m eleven!”
“Eleven!” Olivia slumped back in her chair, “Eleven? You’re eleven years old?”
“Yeah…and, you can just save the wisecracks about being small for my age.”
Before Olivia could start piecing together the loss of the boy’s parents and the unlucky circumstance of him being eleven, Clara burst through the door. “Guess what?” she called out on her way through to the kitchen, “Somebody in this building has smuggled in a…” The statement was cut short when Dog came flying through the air and landed against her bosom. Clara, being low to the ground and built with a substantial center of gravity, wavered a bit but stayed upright and as soon as she’d regained her balance, she screamed, “dog!”
Olivia could already picture all of her belongings set out onto the curb.
“How could you?” Clara shouted, “You know the rules!”
“It’s not what you think;” Olivia mumbled apologetically, “The dog isn’t mine.”
“Not yours? When it’s standing right here in your kitchen?”
“The dog belongs to Ethan Allen Doyle, Charlie’s grandson.”
“Oh.” Clara looked over at the boy then lowered herself into a chair. “Still,” she sighed, “you know the rules. If The Committee gets wind of this…”
Olivia, feeling the need to talk and knowing that she had some explaining to do, suggested Ethan sneak the dog down the back stairwell and walk over to the building across the street. “You might even want to take a stroll down to the market, pick up some peanut butter and a can or two of dog food,” she said pressing a dollar bill into his palm.
Once Ethan was beyond earshot, Olivia told the entire story; how she’d found the boy on her doorstep, how he supposedly had no other family to turn to and how the dog had come along as part of the package. “What was I to do?” she sobbed, “Toss the poor child out into the street?”
“But The Rules Committee has specifically stated—”
“It’s not as if he’ll be here forever,” Olivia pleaded, “just till I can work things out. It might be a day or two, a week at the most.”
“Well,” Clara hedged, “I suppose if The Committee didn’t know…”
“I’d make sure the dog stays quiet.”
“A few days, you say?”
“Maybe less.”
“I guess I could speak to some of the neighbors…”
Olivia
I can’t help wondering if the turmoil of this life ever ends. Just when I start believing I have an existence to call my own, Ethan Allen shows up at the door, claiming to be Charlie’s grandson.
I can honestly say, if it weren’t for those blue eyes which are exactly the same color and shape as Charlie’s, I would have turned the boy away, figuring him to be an imposter. I probably should have done it anyway—I mean, what’s a woman like me going to do with a child?
Worst of all, he’s eleven! Why, I could barely handle my own year of being eleven.
I can’t even venture a guess as to how this thing will turn out. More than likely, I’ll end up evicted. I’ll be set out on the street with a handful of belongings and nowhere to go. No apartment, no friends.
I feel sorry for the child, but having him and that awful dog live with me is simply too much to ask. I’m willing to lend a hand and help the lad find his true family, but I don’t think I can do much more than that. There has to be somewhere the boy can go—some family, someone who’s accustomed to having children around and knows how to deal with them. Heaven knows that’s way beyond the realm of my capabilities. I don’t like making such a decision; but I can’t think of any other alternative.
I’m not really the boy’s grandma and I’ve got no obligation, but I still feel for the child—everybody ought to have somebody that loves them.
The Best Kept Secret
Who knows what might have happened, had Clara not agreed that tossing Charlie’s poor grandson out into the street would be quite unchristian. But after she’d spent two whole days going from door-to-door explaining the situation and telling folks they were beholden to help Olivia Doyle in her time of need, the Rules Committee had no chance. Even if they had brought in members of the Spanish Inquisition to ask about the rumored barking, residents would have simply shrugged their shoulders and claimed not to have noticed the clumps of dog hair on the seventh floor carpet.
Clara reported this back to Olivia on Tuesday afternoon as she and Ethan Allen were sitting down to a dinner of macaroni and cheese, which the boy claimed was his favorite. “Does that mean I can stay here?” he asked when he heard the news.
“For a while,” Olivia answered, “till we can sort things out. I’m sure somewhere there are relatives who are worried sick over your whereabouts.”
Ethan rolled his eyes then swallowed down a bite of macaroni.
Olivia was starting to picture herself hobbling through life with both the boy and the dog chained to her right leg. How could such a thing be happening; especially now that she’d pulled together the remnants of her life and started over. Hoping maybe the boy had rushed to judgment in thinking there were no relatives, she tried again. “So, Ethan,” she asked, “did your mama ever mention where she and your daddy met?”
“Nope.”
“What about Christmas cards, or birthday cards? She maybe get cards or letters from the folks back home?”
“You gotta be kidding!”
“I most certainly am not. Folks generally stay in touch, one way or another.”
“Not Mama!”
“Well, what about friends or neighbors?”
“We didn’t have no neighbors. The Picken’s farm was closest, but Mama claimed she wouldn’t wipe her ass on that mealy-mouthed Missus Picken.”
“I told you to stop using such language!”
“You said, if I was eight—but I’m eleven!”
“That’s still too young to be cussing.”
“I ain’t cussing,” he replied sullenly, “I’m just repeatin’ what Mama said.”
“Well, repeat it without cuss words,” Olivia snapped; then she scooped up his dish and carried it over to the kitchen sink. She would have been angrier with him for bantering about foul language as he did, but obviously the boy had a bunch of hurts tearing at his insides. Anybody could see it in his eyes, in the way he’d look down at his shoes and mumble answers that had the sound of words pushed through a mouthful of marbles. It was a terrible thing to lose somebody you loved—nobody, Olivia thought, knows that more than I do. She slipped back to thinking about the days that followed Charlie’s passing—minutes weighted like hours, hours longer than a day and an aching loneliness that rubbed her nerves raw. Caught up in the moment of remembering, she turned to the boy and said, “I’m real sorry about your mama and daddy, Ethan.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a Spaulding rubber ball which had accidentally followed him home from the market. “I can’t do nothing about that,” he said, and started thunking the ball off the side of the cabinet. Bounce-thunk-bounce. Bounce-thunk-bounce. Bounce-thunk-bounce. It was a sound that could jangle a person’s nerves real quick.
“I wasn’t expecting you could do anything about it,” Olivia answered, sounding unbelievably tolerant. “I was just offering up some sympathy.”
Bounce-thunk-bounce.
She’d come across people like this before, clerks or telephone operators, singled out for some rinky-dink infraction of the rules—angry, but yet unwilling to d
efend themselves. You had to draw people like that out, ask question after question till you got them started talking, then you might learn the truth of things. “Who was it that died first,” Olivia asked, “your mama or daddy?”
Bounce-thunk-bounce.
“Ethan?”
“They was both killed,” bounce-thunk-bounce, “…the same time.”
“Killed?”
He nodded, but focused his concentration on smacking the ball.
“In a car accident? How?”
“Murdered,” the boy answered, then whacked the Spaulding with such force that it rebounded off the cabinet and went sailing through the kitchen window. Olivia, although she was certain everyone in the Wyattsville Arms building had heard the breaking of glass, went to the boy and in the most comforting way imaginable whispered, “It’s okay, honey,” she wrapped her arms around him, and pulled his head to her bosom. “When you’re ready, Ethan,” she said, “then we’ll talk about what’s happened.”
He pulled back and screamed, “I can’t never talk about it! I didn’t see nothing!”
“Okay,” Olivia replied as if she’d accepted his answer and wanted nothing more, but she knew the explosion of words were hiding something terrible and sooner or later, the boy would let go of it. When he stomped off to the living room, she remained in the kitchen and finished doing the dishes.
Later on, she followed him into the living room and found the dog sitting on her new silk chair. Ethan Allen was stretched out across the floor, his dirty sneakers tracking footprints up the side of the wall. “You got any playing cards?” he asked.
“I believe so.” Olivia stepped over his legs and began looking through the desk drawer. After she’d rummaged through a number of boxes and packets she came upon a worn deck of cards—cards that Charlie, who had a fondness for gambling, had no doubt spent many an evening with. “Here you are,” she said and handed them to the boy.
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