by Karen Foxlee
“You never told us he had family,” I whispered. She never told us we could just try and find him.
“Hush,” said Mother. “This isn’t about that.”
“I have cousins,” I whispered.
“Lenny,” she said louder. “This isn’t about that.”
Davey scratched at his corn-coloured hair. Smiled nervously. I could see he had the cousins in his mind now as well. We read each other’s minds across the table.
“What do you think, Davey?” she asked again.
Peter Lenard Spink. Peter Lenard Spink. Peter Lenard Spink. The incredible disappearing man.
“I don’t know,” said Davey.
That night, with the traffic rumbling down below and the buses pulling in and out of the station we didn’t run away to Great Bear Lake in our fantasies. We deliberately did not think of the possibility of finding our father. We imagined the cousins across our little dark room instead. We imagined them to life. We imagined them in Technicolor. We imagined them with trampolines and green lawns and tennis courts. We imagined them fresh-faced, white-teethed, the Sound of Music Spinks in a station wagon. We imagined them with dogs and cats and canaries in cages. We imagined them bright as stars until they burned behind our closed eyes.
The Search for The Sound of Music Spinks
5’ 6”
APRIL/MAY 1976
Matthew Milford’s yellow-beetle gift went round and round inside CJ’s bug catcher. It was a shining leaf beetle. Pelidnota punctata, your typical June bug, only it was early. It had four black spots on its elytra like it had been stapled. It didn’t like elm leaves or oak leaves or birch leaves, all of them new and green in the park.
So I let it out the window in our bedroom, which was against the rules. I opened the window slowly so it wouldn’t squeak and Davey gasped on his bed, like I’d just unlocked the gates to hell, and I could tell he wanted to scream, Mama, Lenny’s opening the window, but somehow he kept it in. I let the beetle go, shook it out of the bug catcher.
It stayed there for a while like it didn’t know what it should do. It clung to the window in the April rain like it didn’t want to go.
It needed vineyards. “Fly,” I said.
I didn’t like its chances on Second Street.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
“I studied it enough,” I said.
All the numbers Mother had called got her nowhere. She had opened up the telephone book to Spink and started. There were several Spinks in the phone book and I couldn’t believe I had never thought to look. There was a Spink who lived three streets over on Fifth. An E. Spink. Davey and I imagined names for E. Spink when we were alone. Edward. Edwina. Elvis. Esther. Eleanor. It could be the uncle or it could be a grown-up cousin. It could be a grandfather. He would live in an apartment filled with old books and smoke a pipe. That thought almost lifted me up into the air, my head was so breezy with grand thoughts. I went to say it and then bit my tongue.
“I don’t think that would be one of his family,” said Mother when her finger rested on E. Spink three blocks over. “He would have said if he had family so close.”
But what if I had a grandmother three streets away, little and grey, with a knee rug and a round belly and cookies baking in her oven? I couldn’t stop it. What if she came to the door and smiled and said, Well, would you look at you, you’re the prettiest little thing I ever did see.
What if she had a quaint little apartment and a cat called Nefertiti?
What if she had a complete encyclopedia set?
What if she had flowers in vases and needlepoint pictures on the wall?
What if she kept her teeth in a glass at night?
My mother left a message with a man in Broomfield. He denied he was a Spink, but he said he knew the Spink man she was looking for and would get in touch with him. No one ever called back. The Spink in Sycamore said he didn’t have a brother named Peter Lenard. He had a brother called Bob. He’d never heard of a Peter Lenard. He didn’t have any first cousins, no. He wished he could have helped, because my mother sounded like a mighty nice lady.
“Well, we tried,” said Mother when she tucked us into bed. “That’s the best we could do.”
“We sure did,” said Davey in his pleasant Davey way.
I could tell he was itching to get started on our nocturnal saga of the cousins. Ellen and Kelly had been jumping on the trampoline and Ellen had broken her arm. Grandma E. Spink was about to enter the story. She was going to come to the hospital after a long estrangement.
“How’s your head, Davey?” asked Mother. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it’s okay,” said Davey. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“How are your eyes?” she asked.
“They’re just fine,” he said.
“How are your kneecaps?”
“They feel brand-new,” said Davey to get rid of her.
“Good boy,” said Mother.
But the truth was, he was growing fast. He was growing like his tumours knew they were running out of time. He got blisters from his shoes that were suddenly too small. He stared at his blisters willing them away. He knew what happened when blisters appeared. Mother got anxious. She started marching up and down, talking about the price of shoes. She started looking in her money jar on top of the refrigerator.
But it wasn’t just his feet. His ears grew. His nose. He looked down at himself, held his arms out, looked at his hands, as if even he was amazed.
“You’ve got to slow down, Davey boy,” said Mother.
“I’m trying,” said Davey.
“Every time I see you, you’re a bigger boy,” said Mr. King when he came for Saturday lunch.
“Why does it take so long for this operation to be coming?” said Mrs. Gaspar. Her chubby arm barely reached around him when they waltzed in the kitchen. She smoked her cigarettes and told us stories about giants she had known in Hungary. They lived in the mountains and at night you could hear their footsteps, boom boom boom, far away. They wanted little children to be their servants. She would never have told that story if Mother hadn’t been at work.
Davey and I looked in Mrs. Gaspar’s phone book while she was taking a shower, thinking hers might have been different. It was the same. All the same Spinks. I ran my finger down the list and stopped still at the E. Spink on Fifth Street.
“What if it’s our grandma?”
“Or our grandpa?” said Davey.
“We could go there,” I whispered.
Davey’s eyes widened. It was only three days until he and Mother had to go to Chicago. I was going to stay behind with Mrs. Gaspar.
“Why not?” I said. “It’s just a knock at the door. We can run away if it’s the wrong person.”
“Are you crazy?” asked Davey.
I was. We didn’t go. The days started going too fast. Davey’s class made him a giant GOOD LUCK card which was as big as him. I had to help him carry it home from school. Mr. King came out to the front of his fruit store. Mother had been distant with him, she was busy, she had things to do, Davey was sick. He tried to wheedle his way in with us. He said, “Well, here come the two best-looking kids in town.” I stared straight through him. “How you feeling, Davey, how’s your noggin?”
“My noggin is fine, Mr. King,” said Davey, smiling.
“Not long until Davey’s operation,” said Nanny Flora. “How tall did you say he was?”
“Five feet five inches,” I said. On his side of the kitchen door his line was ever-changing. It didn’t stay stationary for months like mine.
“I’ll be thinking of him here and praying to our good Lord,” she said. “And you’re staying with the lady across the hall?”
“Mrs. Gaspar.”
“Foreign, isn’t she?” she said with the same voice she used when speaking of vermin.
“Hungarian,” I said.
“She feed you okay?” she asked.
“Mostly goulash,” I said.
“Put your mother on,”
said Nanny Flora.
“No, you don’t have to come,” said Mother. “No, she’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Lenny and Mrs. Gaspar get on just fine.”
Mother and Davey took the afternoon bus on a school day but I was allowed to stay home and walk across the road with them. The Greyhound bus station was dishevelled in the sunlight, the plastic chairs faded and the GO OUT AND SEE AMAZING AMERICA posters weary and buckled. No one looked amazed. We shuffled forward in the line toward the bus and Mother panicked about me walking home alone.
“I walk to school every day,” I said.
But there was no being rational with her when she was anxious.
In the GO OUT AND SEE AMAZING AMERICA poster we stood beside, there was a family looking very happy in a bus. The father was pointing and the children were leaning forward to see what he was pointing at.
“Go now, so I can watch you cross the road,” Mother said.
“No,” I said, “I’m staying to wave.”
In the GO OUT AND SEE AMAZING AMERICA poster no one was catching a Greyhound bus to get their noggin sliced open. No one was leaving and not looking back. No one was running away. No men with nicotine stains on their fingers saying goodbye forever.
“Please can she stay?” said Davey. He was carrying the complete F volume because falconry had been clicked inside. Falconry was his favourite even though the eagles entry was much better. Falconry was about humans and birds of prey together, was how he explained it.
“Everything will be fine,” I said to Davey.
“Give your brother a hug,” said Mother.
“No,” I said.
“Oh, you upset me,” she said.
Then the bus driver was calling for everyone to get on.
“Bye, Davey boy,” I said. It was the only way I knew how to say goodbye.
“Bye, Lenny,” said Davey.
When they took their seats inside Mother made hand signals at me to go, to start walking back so she could watch me, but I didn’t. I stared at Davey and he stared at me. I saw him make the bombardier beetle fart noise, I saw my mother look displeased. Then the bus was pulling out and he put his one great hand up against the window and I raised my hand outside. Then they were gone and I was walking back in the bright May sunshine alone.
The package was lying on the floor beside our mailbox, beside the letters for Mr. Petersburg from Louisiana State Penitentiary and Leavenworth in Kansas and Sing Sing in New York state. We liked to see those ones from Sing Sing. Sing Sing, Davey always said under his breath, as if it were magical. Don’t you dare touch those letters, Mother always cried.
The package was from the Burrell’s Publishing Company, addressed to Mother. I opened it. I normally wouldn’t, but Mother wasn’t there and maybe it was important. Maybe they had decided to give us the year books for free too. Maybe they wanted us to come to Indianapolis for a free tour of the headquarters. Maybe they wanted me to write some articles on beetles for them.
I ripped it open. It was bigger than our normal packages, bigger even than the packages with triple issues. Inside were H issues, six of them all together. A letter too and my heart gave a little lurch.
* * *
April 30, 1976
Burrell’s Publishing Company Ltd
7001 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46241
OUR GIFT TO YOU IS THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE
Dear Mrs. Spink,
We hope you are enjoying the triple-issue plan free of charge for the limited time of three months. I thought I would send all the H issues at once, for Davey, because I know he is sure to like hawks and perhaps hummingbirds. I do hope they make it to you before you travel. I wanted to let you know how sad I was to hear that Davey needs an operation. Everyone here at Burrell’s Headquarters is wishing him a speedy recovery.
Yours sincerely,
Martha Brent
General Sales Manager
* * *
Mother must have written to Martha Brent. It was the only way she could have known about Davey’s operation. I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. Mrs. Gaspar was seated on her sofa with Karl and Karla, head bowed, when I opened the door. I didn’t interrupt her. I sat quietly on the floor and waited. She prayed the names of saints. She held a picture of Pope Paul IV in her hands. She kissed it several times and the glass was smudgy with all her kisses. She really needed to clean that glass. When she was finished, she opened her watery blue eyes and smiled at me sadly. Karl and Karla got excited that she was finished. They stood up and nuzzled against her.
She offered me the pope picture to kiss.
I said, “No thanks.”
“What now?” she said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling forcefully.
I shrugged. I tried to act completely normal. But I had a sudden thought of Davey and Mother on their bus, going along the highway and I felt a deep sorrow because in all my life I had never been separated from them. It was like a trapdoor opening and the ground falling away beneath me and I let out a loud sob there in Mrs. Gaspar’s living room.
“Oh, there, there,” cried Mrs. Gaspar and she motioned me to sit closer. “My dumpling.”
Dumpling annoyed me. It added a zing of aggravation to my sorrow. It made me want to cry more.
“We’ll eat,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “It will make you feel better. A full belly always makes you feel better.”
I dried my eyes on the yellow handkerchief from Nanny Flora. I wouldn’t have even minded talking to her. The day stretched inexorably. The apartment was quiet and lonely without Davey. His Space Family Robinson comic lay open on the end of the sofa and I couldn’t bear to look at it. I looked at it out of the corner of my eye. Karl and Karla watched my every move.
I was glad when evening came. I unfolded my sleeping bag in the living room and the blanket was stiff and smelled like dog fur but it was good to be there with the light off, away from Mrs. Gaspar. I imagined the cousins, or I tried. Each time they flared to life then faded like a match in the rain. I tried to imagine them, all their scooters and bicycles, their Hula-Hoops and trampolines, but each time they fizzled and faded. Without Davey, they were nothing but embers.
H:
Hungary
5’ 6”
MAY 1976
Mrs. Gaspar’s egg-yolk-coloured phone rang when they’d been gone two days.
“Oh goot,” said Mrs Gaspar. “Goot. Tomorrow. Yes, Friday we will be praying then.”
“The operation is tomorrow,” she said to me. “Yes, I’ll put her on. Yes, she is being a goot girl.”
Mother sounded far away, much farther than Chicago. She sounded like she was calling from the moon. Her voice had an echo and I could hear the dimes dropping through the phone.
“Are you okay, Lenny?” she asked. I could tell she was nearly crying.
“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t. I was terrible. I was adrift. When I walked to school I felt like part of me had been amputated. I felt made of air. I could easily be blown away by the late spring breeze.
“Well, the operation is in the morning tomorrow. Here’s Davey, he wants to say hello quickly.”
“Hello, Lenny,” said Davey. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I saw a Ford N-series tractor out in a field on the way here. It was so good to go in the day. And hey, guess what?”
“What?”
“I think I saw a golden eagle out above the fields too, diving down.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No kidding,” said Davey. The coins fell through some more. He didn’t say anything and I couldn’t think of anything. I heard Mother say something.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “See you, Davey boy,” I said but I think they’d already run out of money.
The next day, the day of Davey’s operation, was the exact same day that CJ rocked out on the drums at the school assembly. No one expected it. CJ was so small and pale she kind of blended into things. Hardly anyone in
the school would have known her name. She was just another snotty fourth grader. But all that was about to change.
Artie Sellick was the seventh grader who played the drums in the school band. There was a drumming band as well, but this was the real drum kit, the full kit, that backed up the orchestra. And that day at assembly Artie was sick.
His understudy Martin Kennedy was also sick.
CJ, who usually played the triangle in the big band, put up her hand.
“I can play the drums, Mr. Maxwell,” she said.
Mr. Maxwell looked over the top of her when she said it, scanning the band crowd for Lewis Ford, who had played for a couple of years, but then stopped when he started to learn the saxophone.
“But really, Mr. Maxwell,” said CJ. “I can play. I have a drum kit at home.”
She was like an annoying fly in Mr. Maxwell’s ear. He looked down at her distractedly.
“I’ll show you,” CJ said, and she ran to behind the drum set and took a seat, which was too low, and played a quick round. She had Mr. Maxwell’s attention now.
“Can you do ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’?”
“Of course,” said CJ. She played a segment.
And so with minutes to spare before the school filed into the hall, Mr. Maxwell helped CJ adjust her seat and she took her place.
CJ played with the band and CJ excelled, but she didn’t stop there. When the march was finished, CJ kept playing. All the woodwinds and brass and her triangle buddies had their instruments in their laps. The kid with the cymbals had his mouth open, astonished.
CJ went crazy. CJ went around the kit. She broke into a galloping rhythm, she crashed up and down the scales, she settled momentarily in a 4/4 beat before she was off again. The whole auditorium started tapping their feet. They couldn’t help it. Finally, she came down; she smashed her hi-hat several times, did one huge flyover, and banged to a stop.
