by Karen Foxlee
When Davey came back out smiling it started to snow.
“Did she ask about me?” I said.
“No,” he said, but his left leg jiggled so I could tell he was lying.
We sold two more boxes on Third Street, but we still weren’t entitled to the field glasses.
“We have to save our pocket money,” said Davey. “We can’t spend it. I won’t buy comics, okay, and you don’t spend yours. We put it in a jar like Mama’s jar.”
Mother’s jar was the one on top of the refrigerator. It was for the return trip to the city for Davey’s check-up.
“Promise,” he said while he fed his secret Sea-Monkeys which were really just a pile of sludge at the bottom of the bowl. I lay staring at Charlie, who was swaying pleasantly on his twig. Those few dimes I used to buy little presents for Great-Aunt Em. He was asking for my Great-Aunt Em funds.
But I thought of the Northwest Territories too. I closed my eyes and thought of being far away there.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said.
“You can’t,” he said. “Mother said you couldn’t. Mrs. Gaspar too. No more walking off alone.”
I said, “Davey, please, I’ve really got to go. I just sold all those cards with you. Cover for me just this once.”
“You better not be throwing rocks again,” he said.
It was nearly a week since I’d seen Great-Aunt Em and I was worried. Was she warm enough, did she have enough food? I could feel her waiting across the streets, and it made me sad as I trudged there through the new snow. But I could tell her about throwing the rock, and that gave me a little glimmer of excitement, waiting to hear what she would say to that. I bought a caramel kiss from the corner store on Fourth just in case she was angry. I ran there through the great snowflakes, through the wind.
She was angry.
She said, “Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Things got busy.”
“Oh, busy, that’s what they all end up saying,” she said. Like there had been other girls. My face burned in her apartment. The heating was turned up high. My nose started to run.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
I put the caramel kiss near her hand. She looked at it but didn’t take my offering.
“I threw a rock through Mr. King’s car window,” I said at last.
“You don’t say,” she said. She chuckled a little.
“But I got caught,” I said.
Her eyes met mine, her blue eyes, her Spink eyes, but they looked different to me. Like I hadn’t met her before.
“Do you want me to run to the store for you?” I asked.
“No, not tonight, it’s too late for that and cold out,” she said, softer now. She took the caramel kiss, unwrapped it and popped it in her little mean mouth. Nodded at how good it tasted. “You better run a long home. Before night comes.”
She looked smaller than last I’d seen her. Frailer. My neglect was killing her.
“I’ll put your soup on for you,” I said.
“Okay, put my soup on then,” she said.
“Tell me some more about Esmeralda,” I said. “Do you remember when my father was born?”
“Why, yes, she sent me a telegram of course. We were living on opposite sides of the country by then. Ez was a wanderer. She could never stay still.”
That was where Peter Lenard Spink got it from. I stirred the blood-red soup, listening.
“He was a dear little boy by the time I saw him,” she said and I waited for more, thought she was going to say more. I tried to imagine Peter Lenard Spink as a dear little boy. I kept getting Davey in my head. I jumped when the toast popped.
“Please tell me about my daddy,” I said. “I really want to know about him.”
It was an anxious rushed asking, like it might be my last chance. It felt like that kind of day. My back was to her.
“Paul?” she asked.
“Peter Lenard,” I said.
“Peter Lenard,” she said. “I barely remember him. Big man. Probably where your brother gets it. Why on earth do you want to know about him anyway, when all he ever did was abandon you?”
I kept stirring but I was filled up with sorrows like Mrs. Gaspar’s Lady of Sorrows, like my mother. I was young and already I was filled up. The little seed of doubt broke its husk right there. All her stories, who she was. They cracked open, those stories, and all the cheap tinsel rained out.
“It’s nearly Christmas,” she said when I put the soup in front of her. “Less than a week.”
“I know,” I said, and I smiled at her. “I’ll come back soon as I can.”
“Good girl,” said Great-Aunt Em. “You’re the best of the Spink girls. You’re just the way Esmeralda used to be.”
That night it was very quiet in our bedroom. I couldn’t hear the pigeons. I couldn’t hear the trucks or the buses. The snow had covered everything over. It was monumentally quiet. That night in bed I whispered across the darkened room.
“Davey?”
I thought he might be asleep, his breathing was so soft.
“Yes?” he replied.
“I have something to tell you,” I said.
Destination Em
5’ 6”
DECEMBER 1976
“What?” he spat in the dark. “Who?”
“Shhhh,” I said, “you’ll wake Mother up.”
Then he started to cry. I couldn’t see him, or hardly even hear it, but I could tell that’s what he was doing. He was crying, the way Davey cried, with his mouth open and eyes shut and no noise to start off with, just jerks and ticks. He was a mechanical wailing clock. He only wailed when he’d jerked and ticked enough. I had to get to him soon.
I jumped out of my bed and took two steps across the room.
I held his shoulders.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t. I didn’t mean it. I’ve wanted to tell you.”
“You should have told me,” he said. “I should have come with you.”
“We can still go,” I said. Destination Em. “That’s why I told you.”
“When?” he said.
“On Friday,” I said. “That’s Christmas Eve.”
“Okay,” he said.
He didn’t ask what she was like. He didn’t ask how I found her. He didn’t ask anything. There was just a bad silence in that room because of my betrayal. Because I’d kept such a secret from him. Finally, I heard his breathing settle and then we slept.
Wednesday he didn’t talk to me. A steady rush of snow fell past our windows and I could have sat there all day and watched it because that was the kind of mood I was in. Davey stamped into our bedroom and fed his Sea-Monkey sludge and then glared at me. We walked to school with Mother. We had to cross the road so we didn’t run into Mr. King. Miss Finny came out to say hello and I had to avoid eye contact. Wednesday was bad.
Thursday was even worse because of Mrs. Gaspar’s wheeze. When we got home from school she was sitting in one place, breathing like breathing was the only thing she could do. She had a strange smell: urine-y, dirty, sweaty. Sometimes she lit a cigarette and had one puff, then put it out. I called Mother’s work on her telephone.
“I’m calling an ambulance, Mrs. Gaspar,” said Mother when she had rushed home.
“No,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “Please. It. Is. The. Weather. The. Snow.”
She had to take a breath between each and every word.
“Mrs. Gaspar,” said Davey. He took her hand. “Please say you’ll go to the hospital.”
“Oh, dumpling,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
“Please,” said Davey again. “You’re so sick.”
So Mother was allowed to phone the ambulance and two EMTs came up the stairs with their stretcher. They listened to her chest and bundled her up in blankets. When she was laid down on the stretcher she turned a bluish tinge, a little like the corpse illustration in embalming which seemed a long time ago. Karl and Karla whimpered.
They sat her up and some of
the blueness faded away and they put a mask on her face and she looked better. She waved her fat damp hand weakly. “I will be back,” she said and then they carried her downstairs and out into the snow.
Davey was inconsolable. Even if she told me her dreams first it was him she loved the most. She had looked after him from when he was a baby. She looked after him from when she had to help him to sit up, when she had to burp him. She fed him mashed pumpkin off her mother and father’s tarnished silver spoons.
They were close. They sat side by side on the sofa watching Kojak. They watched Starsky & Hutch. They watched Wonder Woman. They both knew everything there was to know about Days of Our Lives. They sat together on Mrs. Gaspar’s bed and looked up at the moon.
“She’ll be fine,” I said to him.
“I hope so,” he said.
“I know so,” I said.
“What is she like?” he asked, and I knew he meant Great-Aunt Em. It was his first question.
I really didn’t know how to describe her. I bit my bottom lip in the dark, sighed.
“She’s not what you’d expect,” I said.
“Okay,” he said like he didn’t much care, but he did. We were on a collision course. We were hurtling toward the end of something. I knew it.
We went through the streets in the snow. Old streets for me. New streets for Davey. “How much further is it,” he asked. I said, “Quit complaining.” “But Len-neeeeeee,” he said. “I have sore feet.” I said, “I’ll leave you here then.” It was Friday and we were going to the library. We had our library books in our library bags. It was Christmas Eve day and the street was bustling and busy, and the Three Brothers Trapani had on tinsel ties. Davey had the Art of Falconry in his library bag. He didn’t really want to return it. He wanted to keep that book forever.
It was terrible that Mrs. Gaspar was in the hospital but also perfectly timed, although thinking that thought made me feel guilty. It left us completely alone all day. In the morning, as Mother got ready for work, she told us what we could and could not do. No wandering the streets, to the library and back, that was all, clean the living room, clean our bedrooms, feed Karl and Karla, peel the potatoes, play with Karl and Karla.
I must have sighed too loud.
“Don’t you start sighing, young lady,” said Mother.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I was just breathing. Can’t a girl breathe?”
But when our chores were done and our library books returned through the slot in the wall off we went, trudging through the wind and snow. Evening and Mother coming home seemed so far away. There was something we had to do. We had to do it that day. I knew it without saying. I marched us both toward the ending of something.
Part of my heart wished for it to turn out well, of course.
A large part of my heart.
But I was fidgety with nerves and knowing.
Davey had drawn a picture of a log cabin and folded it neatly in his pocket. He was going to give it to Em, I knew it. He didn’t say it but why else would he put it in his pocket?
It made me bristle.
I tried to un-bristle.
I tried to un-bristle for three whole blocks but I couldn’t get my quills back in. I turned suddenly and asked him about it.
“Is that log cabin drawing for her?”
He put his hand over his pocket like I might just shoot laser beams out my eyes at it.
“I just …” he started.
“She won’t like a picture of a log cabin,” I said.
I was surprised to find I had tears in my eyes. The wind made Davey’s hair wave on his head like a field of wheat. He squinted his eyes, looked sorrowful.
I bought the caramel kisses. One from me and one from him, at the corner store.
We walked in silence, the last blocks.
“You can give her the drawing if you want,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. I could tell he was nervous. He kept messing with his library bag. With his parka zipper. With his pocket. He made the farty squelch sound of the bombardier beetle when I pressed the buzzer and Em clicked us in, in return. Inside that grey building was cool and shadowy. We could hear footsteps way up, a door slamming. It felt wrong, is how I’ll say it. It had never felt right but now that I had someone with me it felt more wrong than ever.
I opened her door with my key.
She was in her chair facing the radio listening to music.
“Hello,” she said, didn’t turn.
“Em,” I said.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” she said and she laughed because she thought we were alone. Even her name sounded counterfeit.
“I brought Davey,” I said.
“Who?” she said and she turned so suddenly that I thought she’d tip herself out of her chair. “What?”
For a moment she looked enraged. Her eyes bulged and burned holes into me; she bared her teeth. But then that moment passed, it was over in a flicker and she smiled and said, “Well, I’ll be.”
My heart was the size of a fist. I had read it in the two pages on the heart in the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia. It beat a hundred thousand times a day. With Davey standing there, toeing the floor, it beat faster than it had ever beat before in Great-Aunt Em’s apartment.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said. “Let me have a look at you.”
Davey walked toward the chair. I could tell he didn’t want to. He didn’t like Great-Aunt Em. He wouldn’t look at her. He raised his eyes once, fiercely, put them down again. I saw him feel the pocket where the log cabin drawing was. He wasn’t going to give it to her after all.
She made small talk. It was brittle and stilted like someone walking on dry twigs. She crunched this way and that with her words.
“A bit like your father, yes,” she said. “Or maybe Uncle …”
She stopped, crunched back.
“I never knew that side of the family, they all turned their backs,” she said bitterly. But she was making it up. I knew but I needed Davey to be there to know it completely.
“You had an operation?” Em asked.
Davey wouldn’t answer. He knew right away that he wasn’t related to her. That we had no right to be in that apartment. He was angry and ashamed of me. She was frustrated by him and angry I’d brought him. But there was no going back. She kept crunching with her words. I knew it was the last time.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” she said at last, and there was a nastiness that had crept into her voice. She couldn’t be bothered anymore. Pretending. She was done with pretending.
“You two better run along, then. I’ve got things to do.”
My heart pained so much then. My throat closed over and it hurt to breathe. I went toward her but she put her thin bony witch’s hand up. I put the caramel kiss on her chair arm. She looked at it. I put Davey’s there too because he didn’t seem to want to go near her.
“Off you go,” she said, louder now. “Run along now.”
And that was how my Great-Aunt Em said goodbye to me.
When you are sad, you feel it in your heart, and when you are in love, you feel it too. The heart is always paining or fluttering or lurching or slowing down in misery. We ran home through the blustery streets and my heart was big as a goldfish bowl in my chest. The wind tugged at us. It pushed us. Its breath smelled of nighttime in the park and far-off snow fields. It breathed us and swallowed us and spat us out again.
We ran through the streets and Davey couldn’t keep up with me. He ran like a baby, flailing his arms, his face all contorted. I wanted to leave him behind. I was one block ahead of him and I only turned once every few minutes to make sure he wasn’t run over. He wasn’t. But then above the wind I could hear him calling my name. Lenny … Len-neeeeeee.
The wind was loud that evening. It sounded like the ocean. It swirled and buffeted. It breathed in and all the shop awnings gasped. It breathed out and they shivered. He bellowed my name above it all.
I stopped
so he could catch up to me.
Wet faces, blasted dry by the wind, wet again.
“Why’d you do it?” he said.
Why’d I run from him? Why’d I take him there? Why’d I believe her? Why’d I let her trick me?
“I thought it was real,” I said in a kind of wail.
It went up and down, quavered. The wind took it, grabbed it, threw it away.
We walked the last two blocks. Mother wasn’t home from work. The apartment was just the way it always was, small and cosy and tidy, yet everything was changed. Davey sat on the sofa. I started to make the dinner. My hands shook. I thought of her where she was, all those streets away. The wind washing between us like a tide. What I wanted was a hurricane. I wanted a hurricane to come and blow her away. To blow down her block. To blow down her street.
A tornado to come, to suck her up, slurp her up into the black clouds.
Mother’s key in the door.
I knew he’d tell her. We were both crying. Even if we weren’t both crying it would have been obvious we had been. We were crying.
“What the heck’s wrong with you?” I heard her say. Followed by, “Lenny?” because it must have been my fault.
He started bellowing out the story. He started snorting it out his big nose. I peeled the potatoes carefully. He told the story his way. Which wasn’t my way. His story was sudden and jagged. Great-Aunt Em just appeared like a flash, a bright witch exploding there, bang, and me saying she was real.
Bang. Her in her apartment. Far away.
I slammed down the knife. I marched into the living room.
“Shut up!” I screamed.
Mother looked mighty confused. She stood there in her pink Golden Living Retirement Home uniform, her hair in a fountain. My secret life flowed out of me.
“There’s no Great-Aunt Em,” she said when I was finished.
“Shut up!” I cried.
You should never tell your mother to shut up.
“There isn’t,” she said. “I met his mother. There was no sister.”
