by Glen Huser
“One would think,” Cosmo winks at me, “that Miss Livvy has particular associations with that word.” He has opened another book. “Oh, hey, you 11 like this one, Barbara. Jane Eyre. My aunt gave me this, part of a set of classics. I wonder what happened to David Copperfield?”
Jane Eyre. I like the sound of it, and I think how wonderful it would be to have a last name like air or westwind or fire, rather than Kobleimer.
“I must warn you that parts of it are sad, and parts of it will make you angry. Do you like The Secret Garden?
“I love it”.
“Then you’ll like this one, too.”
We leave with a bagful of books.
“You can’t tell Daddy we have these,” I tell Livvy as we walk home, night beginning to soften things in the distance. It is good to be careful of the places where shadows are beginning to pool.
“I want to,” Livvy pouts. She is doing a little dance, and I wonder if she’ll get home in time, or if we should have used Cosmo’s bathroom before we left.
“If you do, I won’t read you any of Winnie-the-Pooh”
She considers this threat solemnly. “Okay,” she says, “but hurry, I gotta…”
“I know,” I say. “We’re almost there.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The brochure on the clown workshop marks the place where I left off reading Jane Eyre.
Harlequin. Cosmo has told me the name of the clown in the picture on the cover of the brochure, an old picture of a figure in diamond patchwork clothes and a mask. Find the inner clown, touch base with the vital force of creativity, discover the basis for building future experiences in theater and dance it says beneath the picture. The cost is $125. There is a boxed-in square that says “Funding Subsidy Request.” It is the aim of the Clown Council that its workshops be available to all interested candidates… It goes on for several lines of small print, followed by a place for a guardian or parent to sign.
Would Daddy ever sign it?
I read a bit in Jane Eyre, but my mind stays on the workshop. I want to go so badly I feel a kind of pain across my chest, making it hard to breathe. With the house quiet, it would be nice to laze in bed, but the tightness makes me restless.
I get up, stopping at Livvy’s room. She has had accidents in both of her beds and lies curled up on some pillows on the floor, a blanket half over her. Window squares of light fall on the opened, face-down copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, which I read aloud to her until she fell asleep.
I strip the beds and let her sleep. Then I take the bedding and her discarded pajamas down into the basement to the soaking sink. Back up in the kitchen, the morning light shows how dirty the room is. We are out of dish detergent, but I get some laundry soap and tackle the dishes that have piled up over the last couple of days, wiping down the cupboard counter, scraping crumbs out of the cracks, washing the cupboard doors, finally sweeping the linoleum and using what’s left of the dish water to give it a wash.
I imagine that I am Cosmo and wonder what he would do at this point.
Flowers.
There’s not much in the back yard, but there are patches of daisies along the fence, a bit beaten down from midnight thunderstorms and dust from the alley. But I cut a bunch, wash them in the sink, and find one of Grandma’s vases to put them in.
When I check, the coffee canister is empty, but I put the kettle on. Tea will have to do, and Grandma actually prefers it. There is enough of a loaf of bread left to make some toast. I open the tray at the bottom of the toaster, freeing a small mountain of crumbs, add this to the bags of garbage under the sink and then tie these and take them out to the alley.
There are no sounds yet from either Daddy’s or Grandma’s bedrooms. I make some tea for myself. I let it cool beneath the daisies on the kitchen table, tuck the clown workshop application into the back of Jane Eyre and ease into chapter two.
I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself as the French would say. I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I resolved, in my desperation, to go to all lengths.
Jane’s words seem stiff and heavy, like carved furniture in a museum, but they are powerful and strong, too. I read the lines over again and sink further into the chapter.
I don’t even notice Daddy until he’s at the kitchen doorway.
“Pull that shade, Barbara, will you?” He squints against the sunlight. “My eyes have always been too sensitive.”
“Morning, Daddy,” I say. “Is that why you used to work in theaters?”
“You got it.”
I scramble up, pull the blind down, add some hot water to the teapot.
“Angel,” he says, settling himself into the other kitchen chair. I put a mug of tea in front of him. He takes it with shaking hands. “Your mother could tolerate the harsh light of day. I never could.”
“She liked the sun.” I busy myself with the toast.
“I think we’ll just turn this into a bit of Long Island Tea.” Daddy heaves himself out of the chair and checks the bottom cupboard where he and Grandma keep their bottles of sherry. There is only one left and it is mostly gone. “Oh, well,” he sighs. “Maybe Short Island Tea.” He pours the last of the bottle into his teacup.
I put the toast in front of him.
“My goodness, such service. And flowers. To what do we owe all this?”
“Nothing.”
But he looks at me sideways.
Livvy, by this time, has wandered downstairs. Like Daddy, she is not a morning person. She stares distrustfully at the bouquet of flowers.
“How’s my sweet sugar?” says Daddy.
“I’m tired,” says Livvy.
“Maybe we should take her to the doctor again,” I say.
“Doctors,” Daddy snorts into his tea. “When have they ever been able to help her? Give her a million tests. Give her medicine that won’t work. Write down fancy names.”
I hear the toilet flushing. Grandma is up. I put more toast in the toaster. “You want some toast, Livvy?”
“I want Froot Loops.”
“We’re out,” I say. “And we’re out of milk.”
Livvy begins to sob quietly. “I want Froot Loops.”
“Well, I want a million dollars.” Daddy slams his mug down. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get it.” Livvy puts her head down on the table and cries.
“It’s good toast,” I say. “And there’s some marmalade.”
Daddy is eyeing my book. “Jane Eyre. Now that was a wonderful movie. Your mother and I saw that when we both worked at the Varsity and they did a series of Orson Welles pictures. Joan Fontaine played Jane Eyre. If we’d had a third daughter, I think we would have called her Joan Fontaine. You know something, pumpkin?” He pats Livvy’s snarled hair.
“What?” Livvy inhales between sobs.
“It would have been like real life because Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were real sisters.”
“I want a sister called Pocahontas.” Livvy is determined to continue her crying.
I can hear the squeaking of the wheels of Grandma’s walker as she makes her way from the bathroom, across the living room to the kitchen.
“Why is that child weeping?” Her voice is full of cracks. “You’d think when I have a migraine…”
“We’re out of Froot Loops,” I say.
“Don’t you cry, Olivia.” Grandma fishes her cigarettes out of her bathrobe pocket. Her hands are shaking. She has trouble lighting it, but finally gets the cigarette going, sucks in the smoke. “My check should be in today. The first thing we’ll get is Froot Loops.”
“Can I have the prize?” Livvy’s voice quavers. She knows how to play a scene. It’s been years since we quarreled over who got the prize in a package of cereal. I’m surprised she even remembers.
“Of course you can, honey.” Grandma darts a look my way. I shrug.
“You want your tea in the living room, Grandma?” If there’s
one thing Grandma likes, it’s to be waited on. She maneuvers her walker around and heads for her armchair.
“I want marmalade toast,” Livvy decides.
I make toast for the two of them, scraping the marmalade out into equal portions. Grandma even smiles a bit through the cloud of cigarette smoke as I set a little tray on her end-table, with her tea in a bone china cup and the toast cut in triangles.
“This is lovely, Barbara.” She says my name with three distinct syllables. It sounds exotic.
“You go to the bathroom,” I tell Livvy when she has wolfed down her toast. “And stay there for five minutes. I’ll time you.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Then we can have a game of catch.”
“You do what your sister says.” Daddy drinks the last of his tea, his hands less shaky.
With just the two of us in the kitchen, I slip the application form from the back of Jane Eyre and put it in front of Daddy.
“What’s this?”
I tell him about the clown workshop but I don’t tell him anything about Cosmo.
“Where’d you get this?”
“At the library.”
“You know we don’t have any extra money. For God’s sake, we don’t even have cereal and milk for the baby.”
“But you don’t have to pay if you sign this part.”
He looks at the boxed-in paragraph more closely. “Lord,” he says. “They want to know everything from your annual income to the color of your socks.”
“Please, Daddy.”
“We’ll see, hon. I’ll have a look at it later. Put it on top of the fridge.”
“But it has to be in soon. It starts next week.”
“Oh, pee-ardon me. You seem to forget that we have a handicapped child to look after. How many hours a day is this workshop?”
“Three.”
“That’s a long time for Livvy to go untended if Grandma and I are busy, or not well, or something.”
“Maybe Livvy could come along.”
“You know she can’t be far away from home.”
“Why–”
“Barbara, I will look at this later. Now put it away. I think Grandma wants some more tea.”
Now I am crying, but I face the cupboard and won’t let him see me. He wanders into the living room and I hear the television click on.
“What would you like to see, Mom?”
“Oh, you know me,” Grandma says. “Anything you like is fine with me. Do we have any Claudette Colbert? People used to say I looked like her.” I hear the sound of a cassette being sucked into the VCR and a swell of moviestudio music.
Grandma’s check does come in the mail. Which means we will all be heading down to the bank in a taxi and then over to the grocery store and the liquor mart. I help Grandma into her goingout dress. It is a deep rose pink with a pattern of splashy flowers. I hook the buttons along her back. It seems like each time I do it, her back has curved even more into a stoop. Livvy has changed into her party dress even though it needs cleaning. She spilled orange pop on the lace when Grandma’s money came in last month.
“Pretty, pretty,” Livvy chants, twirling around.
“You got a change of clothes for her, Barbara?” Grandma asks.
Livvy and I squeeze into the back seat of the taxi beside Daddy, who has shaved and patted his cheeks and neck with after-shave. The layered smells of alcohol and perfume fill the car. Grandma sits stiffly in the front seat clutching her shiny black purse.
When we pull up to the bank, Daddy gets out and helps Grandma. It is hard for her to walk without her walker.
“I want to go in, too,” Livvy pouts.
“You kids wait in the car and be good,” Daddy calls back at us.
“Guess what I’ve got here.” I pat the survival bag. Livvy’s attention is easily captured.
“Candy?”
“No. Nothing that will rot your teeth.” I reach in and fish out Winnie-the-Pooh.
“Oh, goodee.” Livvy claps her hands. She smiles and waves at the reflection of the taxi driver’s face in the rear-view mirror. As I continue with the chapter where Piglet meets a Heffalump, she sighs and leans back into the seat, but it is hard to keep her attention with the radio crackling and bursting into messages.
“We got money,” she sings when Grandma and Daddy return.
“And we know who wants to spend it,” Grandma cackles as she struggles back into the seat. “You can take us to Mama Isabella’s,” she directs the taxi driver.
“Goodee, goodee, goodee. Pizza! I want pineapple.”
“What do you want, Barbara?” Daddy asks.
I want to go to the clown workshop, I think, but I say, “I’ll share Livvy’s pineapple one. I like pineapple.” It will be good to have pizza after all the macaroni we’ve been eating, but at the same time I’m dreading the hours that stretch ahead.
Mama Isabella’s is tucked in between the liquor mart and the Safeway. It is hard to get Daddy and Grandma away from a booth at Mama Isabella’s. When we’re finished the pizza, I try playing hangman on the paper placemat with Livvy, choosing a really easy word to spell–DOG–but she decides to take over and draw the man on the gallows. Daddy and Grandma have finished the wine they’ve had with supper and are on their third Irish Cream when Daddy tells Livvy and me to go to the Safeway and load up the grocery cart.
Livvy has managed to spill tomato sauce all down the front of her dress. “I want to push the cart by myself,” she says. She has already banged into a pyramid of canned corn, and the man at the cigarette counter is watching us out of the corner of his eye.
“Okay,” I say. “But you have to be really careful, and you have to stay behind me.”
“Oh, bah. Baa, baa, baa.”
“Livvy.”
“It’s not any fun.”
“Grocery shopping’s not supposed to be fun.”
“Baa.”
“Are you a sheep?”
Livvy giggles.
We go up and down the aisles. Froot Loops. Milk. I have a hard time getting Livvy away from the bakery department. She piles a chocolate cake and strawberry tarts into the cart.
“Grandma will get mad,” I tell her.
“Baa,” Livvy says. “Can we go home now? Me wanna play with Bingo.”
“Just a bit more.”
The cart is piled full and we have done two word-search puzzles, waiting on the bench by the door, when Daddy and Grandma finally come. They have been arguing. Daddy’s cheeks are wet with tears, and Grandma’s mouth is a tight, thin line.
“Daddee.” Livvy hangs onto Daddy’s trousers. “I need to whisper something to you.”
“Did you have an accident?”
“No,” Livvy scowls. He bends down, and when she’s through whispering, he says, “Ask Grandma. It’s her check.”
“Can we get a chocolate bar?” Livvy acts suddenly shy and looks as if she is going to burst into tears. “And can I get a Pocahontas coloring book?”
Grandma Kobleimer has eased herself into a chair by the door. “Get whatever you want. My money isn’t my own these days.”
We stop at the video store and Livvy pulls six movies off the shelves before we notice what she’s up to. Daddy has already piled my arms full from the Classics section.
“Carnosaurs. Interview With a Vampire. Are you out of your mind, child?” Daddy hollers.
“How come I never get to choose?” Livvy is sobbing now, more from fatigue than anything else.
“Child’s Play 2. Every one of these needs to be put back.”
“The children’s section is over by the window,” I say. “Maybe you can choose a couple from there.”
“I want to go home,” Livvy cries. It’s too late to get her to a bathroom, I realize. Daddy shoves Livvy’s videos onto the nearest shelf.
“Oh, for crying out loud. Couldn’t you have waited a few more minutes till we got home.”
Daddy’s voice is rising all the time. I see people looking at us sideways.
Livvy has broken into loud sobs. Daddy pulls some bills out of his pocket and tells me to pay for the videos while he gets Livvy out to the taxi.
“Looks like your dad took out the whole Classics section.” A boy with three earrings in one ear and two in his nose punches in the movies. “Titanic. Never knew there was an old movie of that.”
The taxi driver takes some more of Grandma’s money when we get home. His nose is wrinkled up and he mutters, “There better not be any damage to my upholstery,” as Livvy climbs out of the back seat.
“You ever heard of a tip?” Daddy asks him, his voice tight.
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean you aren’t going to see one. Your precious upholstery is filthy to begin with.”
“That upholstery was shampooed…”
I start to lug the groceries out of the trunk.
It is close to an hour later by the time I’ve helped Livvy get ready for bed. She is so tired she barely touches the piece of chocolate cake she insisted on for a snack, and falls asleep before I can finish a page of Winnie-the-Pooh. It’s hot in her room, and her curls lie damp against her face. For a time I sit and look at her. There is a faint smell of perfume from the soap she used in her bath and didn’t do a very good job of rinsing off. That and the bathroom smell that is always in her mattresses, stronger in the heat. She sighs in her sleep and mumbles something about Bingo. From downstairs I can hear the drone of the television and Daddy’s voice above it.
“No man was ever expected to put up with what I have to,” he is half-hollering, half-crying.
“Pipe down,” Grandma screeches back.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, a voice swells from the TV as they both pause for breath.
I slip downstairs past the hollering and crying and The Sound of Music and get the clown workshop application from the top of the fridge. There are other forms there. Government welfare forms, a couple with Daddy’s signature. I take them along with Jane Eyre and go back to my room.
This is the smallest room in Grandma’s house. Mama used to do sewing in it, her hands guiding pieces of cloth across the work leaf, the chatter of the needle mixing with the sound of a little radio she carried with her from room to room, while I played with a doll or did a word search on the floor.
