“I’m glad Mr. Pebbles came down. He lives upstairs in my bedroom. I like to talk to someone when I work in the house, and if there is no one here, which is most of the time, I’ll talk to Mr. Pebbles. The first Mr. Pebbles died years and years ago,” she said. “I have that picture of him.” She nodded at the wall on my right, where a black-framed picture hung of a white cat sitting and looking like it was posing for the camera.
“It looks just like this Mr. Pebbles,” I said.
“Oh, yes. Like identical twins.”
I had always wanted a cat, I thought, but Mama had said we’d be eating cat hair no matter how much she cleaned. The hair could float up the stairs and into our noses while we slept. “Dogs bark harder at people who’ve swallowed lots of cat hair,” she had told me.
“People who have dogs or cats usually get another one after their dog or cat dies,” the Umbrella Lady said now. “Some people can’t do that, but this is a way I kept the original Mr. Pebbles alive, you know, by having another cat that is identical. I feed him the same as I fed the first Mr. Pebbles and the second, and he sleeps in the same cat bed.”
“Second?”
“Oh, yes, there was a second. The second Mr. Pebbles was hit by a car full of teenagers who drove up on the sidewalk out there. In the summer, he used to sleep on the sidewalk. The first and the second are buried in the backyard. I’m the only one who knows exactly where. If you looked in the spring, though, you would see some pretty wildflowers coming up, and you would know, I bet. Wouldn’t you?”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know why I should especially be able to know there were cats under the flowers, and why would I be here looking in the spring?
“I don’t think it’s right to forget something or someone who died just because they’re buried and out of sight. Which brings me to the big question. What happened to your mother? Why are you with only your father?”
I didn’t answer. It was something she hadn’t seemed very concerned about knowing. I was glad of that, because it made me sad to think about it and actually horrified at the idea of explaining what had happened to Mama. It was still much better to think of it as a bad dream, but suddenly, she pulled her question out of a hat, as my father would say. I could almost see her reach up over her head and pluck it off a question tree to toss quickly at me.
She stopped working and looked at me when I didn’t answer. She had a hopeful expression on her face, the sort of expression where eyes are smiling and there is the start of a little laugh at the corners of lips.
“Is your mother still alive? Did your father and mother divorce? Most of the time, children stay with their mother when there is a divorce, especially children as young as you. Were you visiting your father and returning home to your mother? What have you been told or, rather, told to tell other people about your father and your mother? Divorced couples have so many secrets buried in their heads that they have to look away from other people’s inquisitive eyes, and they tell their children basically to tell lies. But divorces born out of lies give birth to lies. Is that what’s happened? Is that what’s going on? You should tell me what you know. What do you know?”
Her questions came one after the other, with just a tiny pause in between during which she could tell I wasn’t rushing to answer.
Finally, she stopped working on our dinner and turned completely toward me. She had her hands on her hips. The dark-green apron she was wearing was embroidered with red and white threads. I didn’t understand what the words meant. It read: Chefs help those who help themselves. If they helped themselves, why would they need the chef’s help, anyway?
“So?” she asked. “Let’s start slowly and see what you know. First question, maybe the most important question. Is your mother still alive?” She said each word slowly, as slowly as she might if she was asking someone nearly deaf.
I still didn’t want to answer, but she stood firmly, her lips pressed so hard together that her mouth looked more like a pale pink gash across her face. She wasn’t going to move until I told her something about my mother. I could see that.
I shook my head.
“Ah, so there was no divorce. How sad,” she said. “Any child would rather have a divorced mother than a dead mother.”
She stood there thinking. Then she reached into a cabinet and took out a jar almost full of pennies.
“I put a penny in this jar every time something sad happens to me or to someone I like.”
She opened her purse and found a penny. I watched her drop it through a slot in the lid of the jar.
“There. That takes care of that,” she said, and smiled. “Now we’ll only think about something happy, like our pizza and ice cream. Okay?”
I nodded, now wondering if she really meant it. Would she never mention it again?
Because of all the pennies already in the jar, I thought she had gone through quite a few sad thoughts. Maybe that was why she wanted to change the subject very quickly, which was really another sad thought itself.
“That’s good,” she said. “People who stay sad too long, especially people like me, in middle age, grow old too fast. Sadness makes you wither like a grape never picked. But you’re safe if you use the jar. After you drop the penny in, you don’t have to think about it anymore, and if you do, you get another penny quickly. The jar will keep your sad thoughts so you don’t have to keep them.”
That sounded like a fairy tale, but she looked so serious that I had to believe she believed it was true. I had once asked Mama if adults believed in fairy tales and she had said, “The only fairy tale I know is my marriage. No,” she had added.
Now I glanced at the door, wondering if my father had found my coloring book and her note by now. I heard nothing, no footsteps, no knock.
“Think about only something happy,” she sang. She continued to work and then paused. “Later, in between happy things, if you want, we can squeeze in something sad. But always remember we have to drop in another penny as soon as we do,” she added, smiling.
She looked at me, hoping I would smile, too, at her fairy tale, but I didn’t. And why would I want to think about anything sad, anyway, unless she meant thinking about my daddy still not here?
“I suppose it’s time you knew my name since I know yours. I’m Maisie. My father used to call me Maisie-Daisy. And do you know why?”
I shook my head. Another question for me to ask? Around her, I could grow quickly if what she had said about children asking questions was true.
“That’s my real surname, only it’s spelled a little differently. Daisy is spelled D-A-Z-Y. It’s almost Lazy, but I always worked hard just so it could never be. Then one day, because I couldn’t stand being kidded about it, you know what I did?”
I shook my head. Another question?
“I changed the spelling of my first name to Mazy, M-A-Z-Y. Isn’t that smart? I made fun of myself so no one cared to do it anymore. Mazy Dazy. I have a friend who works in the government and helped me change my name legally and very quickly, too. I have the papers in a locked drawer upstairs in the closet in my room.
“Everyone thought my father was too old and far gone, but he understood why I had changed the spelling, and he laughed when I brought him the document to show him what I had done. He was in a home for the elderly by then. When you’re ninety and you can still laugh, you’re lucky. But you don’t have to think about that for a long, long time. And neither do I. Right? Thinking about getting old can make you old.”
Why doesn’t she talk about her mother, too? I wondered, but didn’t ask because I thought she would ask more questions about mine, and I didn’t want to think about her right now, especially without my father. I was afraid I might start crying, and I didn’t want to cry in front of someone I barely knew.
Instead, I just nodded and looked at the door again. She turned to it, too, and then turned back to me.
“If your father doesn’t come today, maybe he’ll come tomorrow, but you shouldn’t worry. Your room is ready f
or you to use as long as you need to use it. I certainly wouldn’t take you back to the train station, would I? Now, back to our pizza,” she said, as if we were making it together.
My room? What room?
I watched her work, remembering how Mama would concentrate so hard on what she was preparing for breakfast, lunch, or dinner that she didn’t hear either my father or me talk to her. She’d turn and look at us with a puzzled expression and say, “What? Did you say something, Derick?”
“A month ago,” he would reply, and she would smirk, bite down on her lower lip, and turn back to what she was doing. Daddy would look at me and shake his head.
Eventually, I had realized Daddy wanted me to help him with Mama. More often than not, when I spoke to her, she would listen. If I asked a question, she would answer, so I would, at his request, ask a question he had just asked. He wouldn’t request it in so many words. He would give me a certain look of expectation, sometimes turning up his palms, and I would pick up on what he had said and repeat it.
Recently, he had told me I was more like a translator at the United Nations.
“Why is that, Daddy?” I had asked.
“Because it’s a place where many people speak in foreign languages and need translators, people who change their words to English or from English to their languages.”
“Mama speaks English,” I had said.
“I guess I don’t speak English,” he had muttered. “Lucky you do.” He had said everything loudly enough for Mama to hear, even though she had closed her ears.
I know Mama wasn’t always like she was right before the fire. Daddy had often remarked about that, too, stressing that Mama had become different and that my original mother wasn’t “the woman she is today.” I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that something Daddy had done had upset her and changed her smiles to frowns and her frowns to tears. They rarely yelled at each other, but I remembered hearing them arguing. It was all muffled in the walls between my bedroom and theirs. In the morning, I would think it had been some dream. But that was when the silences grew deeper. They both grew sadder, and Daddy started to sleep in our guest bedroom.
Not long afterward, whenever Daddy sat by my bed to put me to sleep because Mama already was asleep in hers, he would describe Mama the way a mother or father would tell their child a bedtime story. He would talk about her as if she was already no longer with us.
“Once upon a time, your mother was quite beautiful. That was the way she was when I first fell in love with her. She was always very shy, but I thought that made her even more beautiful. She had that smile that would melt a block of ice. And she wanted to do everything she could with me back then, too. She’d go anywhere with me. Right before and after we were married, I felt ten feet taller when she was at my side. I’d worry I’d bump my head going through a door.”
“You did not,” I had said, and he’d laughed. “Tell me more, Daddy,” I’d said. “I’m not tired enough yet.”
He’d sit there, remembering, his face brightening as he recalled one thing after another, especially describing how Mama would take great care of herself and spend lots of time fixing her hair and doing her makeup. He’d describe how she would shop for pretty clothes and shoes. And then he would stop, and the light in his eyes would dim. He would stand up, and, looking down at me, he would sigh and end with, “Well, that was then; now it’s now.”
Was that something that was true for everyone? I wondered. Daddy would have a now’s now, too? Would I? Did everyone change into a different person? I had asked Mama about it recently, and instead of acting like she hadn’t heard me, she had turned and said, “When someone you trusted disappoints you, something inside you dies, and you change. My best advice for you is, don’t trust anyone, and you won’t change.”
I was thinking so hard about that and Daddy’s bedtime stories that I didn’t hear the Umbrella Lady ask, “Do you want to see where you could sleep if your father doesn’t come until tomorrow? We have to wait a little while for the pizza.”
She took some steps toward me and was standing by the table.
“What?” I asked. It was funny, because I could remember her question even though I didn’t hear it. It was still in my ears. I was acting just like Mama.
“You have to listen if you want to hear,” the Umbrella Lady said, her voice sharp and her eyes turning steel-gray. “My mother told me that when I was your age. If you don’t listen and words go in your ears, they’ll bounce right back out and bump right into all the new words coming, and then everything will sound all jumbled up.”
I didn’t say anything. That sounded as silly as putting pennies in a jar to stop sadness. She continued to look at me hard, with her eyes small, swimming in a little pool of anger. I think she wanted me to say I was sorry that I had ignored her, but I really wasn’t. I was still thinking about Daddy, and that was more important. Anyway, I hadn’t asked her to bring me here; she had asked me to come. I tottered on getting up and running out, but I was hungry, and the aroma of the pizza baking was circling around me.
Suddenly, as if shocked with another thought, she widened her eyes the way someone who was surprised might. “What is your age?”
“I’m eight,” I said.
“Eight. Didn’t they feed you? You look like five, maybe six. What grade are you in?”
“I think third. Mama was my teacher.”
She smiled. “Of course. You were homeschooled. Your mother was using books children in the third grade would use. Did she tell you that?”
“I don’t remember, but I’m going to start school when we’re in our new home,” I said.
“Um.” She looked thoughtful. “You’re quite bright, but I don’t know as your mother challenged you enough, and your father dropped the ball.”
“What ball?”
“Never mind. Just know that you can’t always use your age as an excuse for disappointing other people, like not paying attention to what you’re asked or told. I’ll let you do that this once since we just met, but when you’re with me for a while, whether you like it or not, as I said, you will grow older quickly. There’s no baby time for you anymore, no baby time for someone left at a train station.”
“Why would I be with you for a while? Daddy’s coming to get me,” I said.
She smirked and acted as if I hadn’t spoken. “There was no baby time for me when I was your age, and I had problems just as big, if not bigger. I never went to kindergarten. I had house chores to do. We didn’t have preschool, either, and there were no iPads and smartphones like the cell phones now so I could go lock myself in a closet and secretly talk about things to other girls that would shock and even frighten my parents. I don’t even own a cell phone now. I never owned one. There is no one I just have to talk to and can’t wait until I get home to do so, anyway.”
“My mother stopped using hers,” I said. From the way she was talking, I thought she would be happy to hear that. “She always forgot to charge it, which upset my father. But I want to have my own cell phone someday.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “You’re the ‘look at me’ generation. You dream of doing selfies, don’t you?” She pressed her lips together so hard it created crevices that ran up her cheeks.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember a dream about that.”
“Doesn’t matter what you dream. You won’t do them. You’ll be different. You won’t grow up like most of the other children your age, and you’ll be a better person for it.”
How did she know all that?
“Did your mother have a computer?” she asked.
“She did, but she didn’t use it very much.”
“She didn’t use it very much?”
She put her hands on her hips and looked at the wall. Her face seemed to be in constant movement, her tongue licking at her lips, her cheeks going in and out, and her eyes blinking rapidly. The lines in her forehead seemed to ripple. I couldn’t help but be fascinated. Then she spun on me.
“Well,
didn’t she teach you how to use it?”
“She did and then stopped,” I said.
“Stopped?”
She had stopped doing a lot with me, but I didn’t want to talk about Mama. Daddy never told me not to talk about her now. I simply felt that if I did, it would bring back all the sadness and relight the fire. When that happened, I would cry and, sometimes, fight back a scream.
“So what did your mother tell people she was doing?”
“She used to teach in a public school, but then she became a housewife and mother,” I said, remembering how Mama would answer the same question if anyone had asked while we were all out doing something together. It had been a long time since we had been.
“Well, lucky you. You had your mother always there when you needed her.” The Umbrella Lady wagged her head, but it didn’t sound like she really meant I was lucky. “My mother left us when I was just a little older than you. Matter of fact, she got on a train at the station where I found you and never returned. My father was a lot older than she was, so maybe that was the reason. Never marry a man a lot older than you are. Your husband won’t keep up with you. He’ll be cranky and full of aches and pains, while you want to go dancing. Or even just for a walk down the street!”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if she had to fight off the attack of bad memories. Then she burst into a smile again. It came like a small explosion on her face, widening her eyes and deepening the corners of her mouth.
“You’ll be happy to hear that I had to grow up quickly, just like you will. I had to become the little lady of the house and take care of my father. Later, mainly because he had suggested it, I became an elementary-school teacher and worked right here for twenty-five years. He was hoping I would remain a spinster so I would have no one else but him. But I fooled him.”
I stared at her, because her face changed from happy to angry and back to happy so quickly.
“Hello. Do you know what a spinster is?”
The Umbrella Lady Page 4
