He looked at me, waiting for the Umbrella Lady to tell him who I was.
“Well, it sounds like we gave you a good education,” the Umbrella Lady said instead.
“Is this your—”
“Nice to see you, and I hope you don’t still put your finger in your ear and shake it.”
“Scrambling my brains,” he added, smiling. “I remember. And I stopped doing it.”
“Well, then, I was successful,” she muttered.
She started us away before Jeffrey Polton could say anything else. I looked back at him and saw he was still looking after us and smiling, but smiling like someone who was a little confused.
“That’s a mystery,” the Umbrella Lady muttered. “I’d never have predicted he would even get into a college.”
“Why did he call you Mrs. Dutton?” I asked. “I thought you said your name was Mazy Dazy.”
She paused and shook her head. “You don’t miss a beat, do you, Miss Marple? Dutton was my married name. When my husband died, his name, at least for me, died, too. I never liked it, anyway. There’s no ring to it like there is with Mazy Dazy. Forget it. It’s easy to forget a name. Even your own. You’ll see.”
She put her umbrella over the cart and moved us quickly through the store, gathering different fruits and vegetables, cans of soup, bread, and milk like someone who had it all memorized. When we reached the shelf of cookies, she paused and told me to choose one. Apparently, I took too long, so she rushed forward and grabbed a box of chocolate snaps, tossing it into the cart.
“We don’t have all day to pick out cookies,” she snapped. “I told you there is a lot to do.”
She made me want to cry. She could get angry so quickly and look so mad that most people didn’t even want to glance at her.
We moved through the grocery store at a quick pace, grabbing a few more things, and headed for the checkout line. After it was all packed up, she handed me a bag that was just a little too heavy for me to carry, along with the bag holding my boots.
“You’ll live,” she said when I struggled to keep it all comfortably in my arms and groaned. It was too heavy to carry with the handles. With her umbrella in one hand and the bag of groceries she was carrying embraced in her other arm, at least she couldn’t hold and squeeze my hand on the way back to her house.
As we walked, I held out hope that Daddy would be waiting for us on the Umbrella Lady’s porch, as she said he might be. But when we approached the house and I saw he wasn’t there, my heart sank again.
“Daddy didn’t see your note,” I said, near tears.
“Well, it’s still on the station door. He’ll see it later, maybe.”
“Where is he now?”
“How would I know? You can’t keep thinking about it. You’ll fill the jar of sad thoughts and then another with the roll of pennies I gave you.” She smiled. “I’m making you an apple pie today. You like apple pie?”
It had been a long time since Mama had made a pie. “Yes,” I said, partly because it was true but mostly because I knew it was what she wanted to hear.
“I’m very good at making pies. I could make them and sell them if I was desperate. I’m not. I have my teacher’s pension, social security, and my dead husband’s money. Lucky for you.”
Nothing was lucky for me, I wanted to say. My mother had died in a fire, and my father was missing. I didn’t care if she was rich or poor or if she was the best baker in the world.
Mr. Pebbles was waiting for us in the entryway. She nearly kicked him after she had hung up the umbrella and walked hurriedly to the kitchen to put her bag on the center counter. She scooped the one I was carrying out of my arms and then took a deep breath.
“Now that you’re here and might be here for a long time, I will need more. It’s one thing for me to buy the little I need, but to care for a child your age, a lot more groceries are required. I might just have them delivered until you’re old enough to go shopping for us on your own.”
“How old is that?” I asked, curious about how long she thought I would be living with her.
“We’ll see,” she said. “Some children don’t stop being children for years after they were supposed to, and some, who are brought up properly, become mature much earlier than usual. You have a good chance of that happening to you, because you have me teaching you wonderful new things.
“Meanwhile, I’ll put everything away, and then we’ll address the painting of your room. Go put your new boots in the entryway under the bench. It’s too early to even think of lunch, and I’ll make the pie this afternoon.”
She thought a moment.
“I think we’d better get you into rags for the painting. We don’t want you ruining these clothes. I have some old shirts. You won’t need a skirt. My shirts will fit you like a dress.”
But what are we going to do about Daddy? I wondered. Maybe he was hurt. That seemed logical. He had left the train station and gotten so hurt that he couldn’t tell anyone about me waiting there. The possibility filled me with strange new hope.
“We need to call the hospital,” I said before she could turn to walk away.
“What? Why?”
“Maybe Daddy got hurt last night.” A horrible thought occurred. “Maybe he was hit by a car and he couldn’t tell anyone that I was at the train station. That’s why no one knew I was there!”
She stared at me a moment. “You are a deep thinker,” she said finally. “Actually, I was like you at your age. But my mother didn’t appreciate it.”
Then she nodded. “Okay. Let’s do that.”
She went to a drawer and took out the phone book. When she had opened it to a page, she traced down with her right forefinger to a number and picked up the receiver. She tapped out the number and turned to me as she waited, smiling.
“Hello,” she said. “We’re checking to see if a Mr. Derick Anders was admitted last night. Yes, thank you.” She put her hand on the mouthpiece. “She’s connecting us to admittance.”
I was holding my breath. What if Daddy really was badly hurt, so badly hurt that he died or might still die? I didn’t know whether to hope he was there or not.
“Yes,” she said, and repeated Daddy’s name. “I see,” she said. “Thank you.” She hung up. “No,” she said. “Your father was not taken to the hospital. Satisfied? He wasn’t hurt. You should be happy about that.”
“But… why didn’t he come back for me?”
“I’m sure we’ll eventually find out, but for now, go on and do what I told you to do,” she urged. “We have to get started. There’s no time to dillydally.”
I put the boots in the entryway, but I didn’t return to the kitchen or go to the bedroom. I stood looking at the front door and thinking. What had she said? Eventually we’ll find out? I wanted eventually to be now.
I was tempted to run out and return to the train station. No matter what had happened to Daddy, he would go there first to look for me, wouldn’t he? If he didn’t see that note and didn’t see me, he might go to the police to ask if they had me waiting somewhere. If they said no, what would he do? Maybe he would never go back to the station. Then what would happen to me?
“What are you doing?” the Umbrella Lady asked. She was standing in the kitchen doorway. “Why haven’t you gone to your room? I just brought you one of my old shirts to put on.”
I looked at her and then at the door. “We have to keep looking for my daddy,” I said.
“Oh, Lord, give me strength!” she cried, looking up at the ceiling. “Where would we look? We called the hospital. We were just in the village. You saw how small it is.”
“Well, then, where is he?”
She stepped toward me slowly. Her eyes looked glassy and cold, her lips so tight that they had small white patches in the corners. She seemed to grow taller with every step, hovering over me grimly. And then, suddenly, she had a small, tight smile as she looked down at me.
“Haven’t I been very nice to you? I’ve fed you, clothed you, bought yo
u shoes and boots and helped you get clean and stopped your hair from stinking.”
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t like what she had done to my hair, but she sounded nice. I was still trembling deep inside. I think I trembled even when I slept.
She nodded at the door. “I’ve never told you that you couldn’t leave anytime you wanted to leave, have I?”
I shook my head.
“We can go looking for your father every day, if you like, but we need to be strong and keep healthy, don’t we? That means we have to eat right and get good rest. I want you to be comfortable while you wait. You can’t keep worrying. Doing things that need to be done will keep you from having bad thoughts. Fewer pennies in the jar. Won’t it be fun painting the room?”
I nodded, feeling myself calm a little.
“And so,” she said after a big sigh, “we should start and not waste our time and our strength. Eventually, your daddy will see the note telling him how to contact or find us. Okay?”
It wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t seem to know anything more than I did. Why keep asking her questions about it?
She reached for my hand. There she goes again, I thought, holding my hand when we walk through the house. Nevertheless, I followed her to the room. She helped me take off my clothes and then put on her shirt, which was, as she had said, like a dress on me.
She stood back and laughed. “You are a sight. Let’s get the paint ready.”
I watched her open a big can and stir it with a mixing stick. Then she carefully poured some into a paint tray. She took the wrapping off a paintbrush and handed it to me before taking the wrapping off another.
“Now, watch how I do it,” she said. She dipped the end of the brush into the pan slightly and began to paint up from the floor molding. “Don’t put too much on the brush, or it will drip. Don’t let bubbles form. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Let’s see you do it.”
I did, and she said, “Perfect. You have the stroke. I knew you would be good at this.”
It did look nice. I kept going. She stood back to watch me.
“Just stay with it,” she said. “I’m going to change into some older clothes myself. We’ll work for a while. Then we’ll have lunch. Remember, I’m making that pie. We’ll paint until we’re tired and start again the next day. We’ll cover the furniture and keep going every day until the whole room is done. Of course, I’ll do the difficult places, stand on the ladder, and I’ll show you how we clean up every day so we don’t ruin the brushes.”
I worked while she talked. It was hypnotizing. And she was right. While I worked, I didn’t think once about Daddy. I felt guilty about that, but it didn’t last long. I didn’t cry, either.
That night, we had her pie for dessert. It really was good. She told me she had taught herself because her mother wasn’t much of a cook or baker. I nearly fell asleep listening to her stories about her mother, mostly stories that seemed to make her angry telling them.
Painting the room did take up much of the next day, too. She wouldn’t let me rush it. We had to take long breaks because her wrist would hurt. Mr. Pebbles, as if he understood he could get in the way, lay outside in the hallway to watch us. The Umbrella Lady and I moved the furniture so we could get behind it, and we spread paper on the floor, doing everything carefully and slowly. She took down the picture of the girl in the frame so we could paint behind it, and then she looked at it and said, “We don’t need this hanging there.”
She took the picture out of the frame and crumpled it in her hands.
“When we get a nice picture of you, we’ll put it in there instead. Okay?”
I nodded, but it seemed strange to think of it. It made it sound like I’d be here forever. She put me right back to painting. Not once did she say I wasn’t doing it right or I was doing it poorly.
“I knew you would have the patience. Most kids your age just want to get things over with. They’re sloppy, sloppy, and sloppy.”
She complimented me constantly. She stood thinking and then nodded as if someone was talking beside her.
“We’ll keep the windows open here at night so it airs out well. Until it doesn’t smell too much in here, you can sleep in my bed with me,” she said. “It’s a very big bed.”
It wasn’t until then that she brought me upstairs. Her bedroom was at least twice the size of the one I was in. Her king-size four-poster dark-maple wood bed was at the center of the room, with a window on the wall on each side of the crescent-shaped headboard embossed in twirling shapes, some of which looked like fish. There were end tables on each side with lamps, the shades a pale yellow. Everything looked old, just like the furniture in the living room.
At the foot of the bed was a large brown rug. There were smaller ones on each side of the bed as well, covering part of the cold-looking grayish tiled floor. To my immediate left was a walk-in closet, the door opened enough for me to see the rack of dresses and shelves of shoes, hats, and what I thought were purses. I saw the closet drawers, too. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door. The floor in the closet was carpeted in the same shade of gray as the tiled floor.
Mr. Pebbles’s white quilted pet bed was in the left corner of the room with a water dish beside it. On the immediate right was a large dresser with an attached square-framed mirror. On the left wall was a large matching wood-framed picture of a ghostlike young woman, looking like she was fleeing into the darkness, the train of her white gown floating behind her. I could see the shadowy trees in the background. Her face wasn’t very clear or visible, but I thought she was probably pretty.
“Who’s that?” I asked, nodding at it.
“Oh, it’s no one I knew or know. I bought it because that’s how I imagine my mother on her wedding day. It wasn’t a good marriage,” she added. “I think she knew it wouldn’t be minutes after the ceremony and always wished she would be like that woman. One day, as I told you, she just became the woman in that painting, stepped on a train, and left the ghost of herself behind. When I think of her on that train, I think of an empty suitcase.”
“Why empty?”
“There was nothing from her past she wanted to take with her, including me.”
She pulled back the caramel-tinted comforter and the cover sheet. Then she patted the bed the way someone might pat a chair or a sofa cushion to call a dog or cat to lie there.
“It’s a nearly new mattress,” she said. “Like sleeping on a cloud.”
I stared and didn’t move.
“Come over and feel it,” she ordered.
I did. It was soft. The bed had four oversize pillows.
“The bathroom,” she said, “is just outside on the left. You’ll find another new toothbrush in it, so you don’t have to run down to get yours. Of course, you’ll take a bath before you sleep in my bed. There are bath powders to use that will give you a delightful scent. Did your mother have that?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. My mother didn’t. She thought taking too much pleasure in anything was a sin, especially your own body. Sometimes it is,” she added pointedly. Then she crossed to the closet, went in, and came out with what was another new pair of pajamas my size, these light green with what looked like pinkish balloons.
Had she always planned for me to sleep up here? I wondered. When did she buy all these things? When did she decide to hang them up here?
“Whose are they?” I asked.
She smirked and shook her head. “Whose could they be but yours? I’m afraid I’m a bit too large for them. Let’s go run your bath,” she said, throwing the pajamas on the bed. “If you look here”—she nodded at the floor on the left side—“you’ll find another pair of new slippers.”
She started out. Mr. Pebbles had come up and stood staring at me as if he wanted to ask what I was doing up here.
She called to me, “Don’t dillydally.”
I headed for the bathroom, glancing back at the woman in the
painting, fleeing. Where was she fleeing to? And really, from what? Something terrible? Would that be me someday, too? Would I just run out and get on a train to anywhere?
I slept with her for two nights. She snored both nights, but somehow I managed to shut out the noise and sleep. She was always up ahead of me, and when I rose and dressed, she always had our breakfast ready.
On the day we completed the painting of my bedroom, taking great care with the moldings and the door, she came to the bathroom while I was cleaning up. She had gone out for her mail.
“I have a letter you’ll be interested in,” she said.
My heart stopped and started.
“Daddy?”
“I’ll read it to you,” she said, and unfolded the paper.
Dear Mrs. Dutton,
(“That’s how I still get my mail,” she said.)
My new arrangements for my daughter Saffron and me have run into problems. I saw your note, and I am aware that she is at your home and you are taking very good care of her.
Would you please continue to do so until I have comfortably set up our new home?
I would appreciate it. Thank you, and of course, give her my love.
Derick Francis Anders
“So,” she said. “You can breathe easier now. There is no reason to go floundering about looking for him.”
“Can I call him?”
“He didn’t indicate a phone number.”
“He has a cell phone. I think I remember the number.”
She stared.
“Why didn’t he call to speak with me?” I asked. “You left the number on the note.”
She changed her expression. I knew that look. She was deciding whether or not to tell me something.
“I didn’t put my phone number on the note with the coloring book, just my name and address.”
“Couldn’t he look it up in the phone book?” I asked, shaking my head.
Suddenly, she looked ashamed. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be upset, but when I went back to get your coloring book, the note was gone.”
What she was saying still didn’t make sense to me. She could see the confusion in my face.
The Umbrella Lady Page 9
