by Karen Foxlee
Peter Lenard Spink
Here is where he might come back. There is room in the story for him. There are a thousand roads and endless cornfields and mountain ranges. There is the big blue sky. He is not caught somewhere, trapped; he has ample turning room. He has his feet in his sneakers and they can get up anytime. He can take his money from the motel table and wash his face with his hands in the chipped sink and examine his pockmarked face.
He can turn his big rig around.
He can follow all the signs. The great eastern, Interstate 90. He can follow the freeway exchanges like ribbons until he feels the familiarity of the landscape, its yellowness, its prickliness, its openness. All that running he’s been doing and there is the land, all that time, just waiting with its open arms, the wide road, the motor inns, the city, moon-rock-coloured, up ahead.
There is room in this story for him to come back. To park his rig and walk across the road, his legs shaking, see, and his hands, and his heart filled suddenly with a lurching emotion, a rusty faucet turned on, smoothing down his hair. He has room to come up the stairs. There is no one stopping him.
Peter Lenard Spink, Peter Lenard Spink, Peter Lenard Spink, I whispered in bed at night, but those words had lost their weight. He was all in pieces in my head, shattered. Was I a little girl in pieces when he thought of me? A smile, a shyness, small hands. A little thing he left that never grew bigger in his mind, but smaller, more faded, papery, airy, like confetti. Peter Lenard Spink I whispered, but I didn’t long for him anymore. He was too light to pin down, too broken to mend. Here is where he could come back but he doesn’t.
Bed-Building
6’ 3”
MAY 1977
Davey couldn’t fit in his bed anymore. He wasn’t comfortable at all. His calves hung over the bottom edge. Even if he lay on his side, his knees came out into the middle of the room and I had to manoeuvre myself around them. He kept growing. His growing hurt him. It stretched his skin and ached his bones.
Mrs. Dalrymple and Mrs. Oliver came to our apartment. The principal and the assistant principal. Mother said, “I just don’t know why people keep knocking at that door. It’s like a three-ring circus around here.”
I thought it would be a Guinness Book of World Records situation all over again.
“Hello,” said Mother, through the peephole.
“Hello, Mrs. Spink,” said Mrs. Dalrymple in a cheery nervous way. “It’s Lucy Dalrymple and Cherry Oliver. We hope you don’t mind, but we just came to check in on Davey, and all of you, really, and offer our help. Well, the school’s help, really.”
Mother didn’t say anything. Yes, it was going to be the Guinness Book of World Records all over again. My eyes wandered to her hand; thankfully there was no tea towel.
“Can I see Mrs. Dalrymple?” said Davey from the sofa. “I really like Mrs. Oliver too.”
“We’re doing just fine,” said Mother, and she opened the door a crack.
The two ladies’ faces squeezed in like little terriers looking for a home.
“The school wants to organize a fundraiser,” said Mrs. Dalrymple. “And really, anyone and everyone is willing to help with anything you might need.”
I could see fundraiser get under Mother’s skin like a toothpick-sized splinter. If she were a horse, she’d snort and stamp and then buck. She stayed as still as she could.
“A fundraiser?” she said. The two principals’ beaming faces peered back at her.
“Hello, Mrs. D.,” said Davey from the sofa.
“Well hello, David,” said Mrs. Dalrymple from her crack in the door.
Mother sighed. She opened the door and they almost fell in.
“We won’t be needing a fundraiser,” she said. “But say hello to Davey by all means.”
Davey was stretched out on the sofa, his eyes closed. He had How to Build a Log Cabin laid on his chest.
“I can’t see so well,” he said.
“Oh, lovely boy,” said Mrs. Dalrymple and she came and fussed over him where he lay. She took his hands and he smiled to feel them.
“Wow, you’ve got soft hands,” he said.
Mrs. Oliver smiled at Mother. Mother grimaced in return. I sat on the floor where I’d been listing my favourite beetles from one to ten. It was a strange thing to have your principal and assistant principal in your living room. It felt like the whole world was being dismantled and rebuilt in new ways.
“Hello, Lenny,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Hello,” I said.
Davey wouldn’t let go of Mrs. Dalrymple’s hands.
Mother said, “Davey.”
“What?” said Davey, eyes closed, enjoying the hand-holding.
“Let go of Mrs. Dalrymple.”
Mrs. Dalrymple giggled like a girl. The world was indeed upside down.
“We wanted to know what we can do to help,” said Mrs. Dalrymple. “Seeing as you are stuck at home, Davey. What could make you more comfortable?”
“Well, we’re doing pretty well, aren’t we, kids?” said Mother.
“I need a new bed,” said Davey.
“Really, is your bed not comfortable?” asked Mrs. Oliver.
“Your bed’s not that bad,” said Mother.
“But really, what’s wrong with your bed?” said Mrs. Dalrymple. It was a visit from the comfort police.
“It’s just too small,” I said.
Mrs. Dalrymple positively exploded with a smile. It was something concrete that could be fixed.
“Well, we can fix that for sure, can’t we, Cherry?” said Mrs. Dalrymple. I had no idea Mrs. Oliver’s name was Cherry. It just didn’t seem right.
“What about Mr. Engelmann?” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Most definitely Mr. Engelmann,” said Mrs. Dalrymple.
Mr. Engelmann taught woodworking.
I closed my eyes and waited for Mother’s quills to come out.
“We will build you a bed, Davey,” said Mrs. Dalrymple. She said it with gusto. Arms out. Like the main star in a musical. A chorus line should’ve come out dancing behind her.
I could see Mother about to say no. The no was being squeezed up and out of her like old toothpaste, but Davey saved the day.
“Holy Batman, that would be the coolest thing in the whole world,” he said.
Mother was anti-Mr. Engelmann and the bed-building. As soon as the principals left she said, “Honestly, who do they think they are? We’re okay.”
I said, “But Davey’s bed is too small.” She waved me away and started to cry because then she was a bad mother for not wanting her son to have a good bed in his dying days. Although no one ever mentioned dying days. Ever. No one ever mentioned dying. The eventual state of all living organisms. The cessation of heart beat and respiration.
“Mr. Engelmann is really nice,” said Davey. “The big boys make magazine holders and coathangers and bird feeders.”
He came to the house with two boys from his high school carpentry class and stood with his hands on his hips. “Heard you need a new bed, Davey,” he said.
“Sure do,” said Davey and he shook Mr. Engelmann’s hand from where he was lying as I read to him about Saturn.
Mr. Engelmann was tall and handsome. He had curly blond hair and a boyish smile. Our apartment looked smaller and shabbier for having him there. The pale-green walls and the threadbare sofa and the plastic fruit in the bowl on top of the television. My mother was anti-Mr. Engelmann building furniture until she saw him. It’s the whole truth. Until he stood at the end of the sofa with his hands on his hips, she said, “I will not have some man I do not know in our home building a bed. I’ll buy a bed.” But then when she saw Mr. Engelmann, he could have built triple bunk beds for giants and she wouldn’t have cared.
“I told you he was nice,” said Davey.
We took him into the bedroom and he looked at Davey’s bed. He had to work out a way to extend the bed, that was all, so it reached all the way to the wall. Well, that was no problem, it was a piece of cake.
/> Mother baked a cake for him and the boys the first day. Then she baked cookies. Her trademark cookies that you could break your teeth on, but Mr. Engelmann had very strong white teeth and they crunched right through them like a metal press. “So,” he said, and stuck his tape measure behind Davey and measured him. He whistled, but not a bad whistle. He measured Davey’s bed. Mother watched him, touching the fountain of hair on her head.
I read about Saturn while they brought equipment up the stairs.
“Saturn is the sixth planet and it is made of gas,” I said. “It has nine moons.”
“Nine moons,” said Davey.
“Nine moons,” I said.
“Imagine looking at the sky and seeing nine moons,” said Davey.
“How many moons?” said Mr. Engelmann, carrying a sawhorse.
“Nine,” said Davey.
“How many moons?” asked Mrs. Gaspar who had come to watch in her shaggy tangerine bathrobe.
“Nine,” I said.
“Pah,” she said. “No one needs that many moons.”
S seemed an important letter. It was crammed with wonderful surprises. I sat in the sunshine on my bed and read to him. Smoke signals, for starters. Snowflakes. Shakespeare thoroughly eclipsed by snake-charming. Scorpions, the colourful plates on shells, ships and shipping, the life cycle of a salmon.
“I’d hate to end up in a can,” said Davey.
Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, all the Souths.
South America.
South American animals. I read their names and described them to him.
Flamingos, vicuñas, jaguars, chinchillas, yapoks, swamp deer.
The Andean condor.
Davey lay in his new bed, which had brown wooden legs and pillows stacked in where the mattress ended. He lay there a lot.
“You’ve got to get up and keep walking,” said Mother. “You’ll get bedsores.”
“I don’t feel any sores,” said Davey. “This bed is the best bed. It’s so solid, don’t you think?”
“So solid,” I said.
“Read me something else,” he said.
The Sahara, nearly as big as America, filled up with sand.
Sand and its uses.
Related articles: beach, dune, desert, glass, sandstorm, silica, quicksand.
“I’m glad I never got to see quicksand,” said Davey.
That stopped me right where I was, mid-sentence.
I wanted a future. I wanted Davey’s future. I wanted Davey and quicksand or Davey and no quicksand. I wanted Davey. I wanted Davey to see quicksand, to fall into it so I could rescue him. So I could drag him out with a big stick and Timothy could fly down from a tree with delight and we would walk home through the woods and he would wash in the lake and Mother would be in the cabin preparing our tea.
“Why’ve you stopped?” said Davey.
“No reason,” I said. Great Bear Lake and all the quicksand disappeared. There was a knocking at the door. It was a sharp, quick rat-ta-tat-tat. And I knew, without even thinking, it was our Nanny Flora.
Nanny Flora
6’ 5”
JUNE 1977
Nanny Flora had a beige handbag that contained breath mints and several pressed handkerchiefs, a powder compact, and a coral lipstick, the Lord’s Prayer on a bookmark, but no book. I know because I looked. I woke early one morning and it was there sitting on the table. I rifled through its contents fast as a thief and my heart jackhammered inside me and nearly lifted my feet clean off the floor.
It had been nearly twelve years from when Mother ran away with Peter Lenard Spink and me, the size of a jellybean in her belly. When Mother saw her, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. The blood drained away from her face and she stumbled forward and then backward like she was drunk.
“Hug,” said Nanny Flora, waving her hand.
They embraced like two women trying to stand up on a boat and when they untangled from each other and held onto furniture for balance both their faces were wet right over.
“And this is Lenore,” said Nanny Flora. I went to her. I walked to her the way one goes up to get their Communion. Very slowly. I turned my head to one side and it was pushed against her bosom with her small frail hands. She was in crisp white pants and a purple shirt. She didn’t smell like Ajax at all. She smelled like lily of the valley and laundry starch and breath mints. I didn’t cry or stumble when she held me but I was glad for her. I wished they hadn’t fought for so long.
I got Davey up and helped him out to the living room. You could see her face blanch at the size of him but she shrugged off her horror, like good grandmothers do.
“Nanny Flora is here, Davey,” I said when I had him down onto the sofa.
“I know, I can smell her,” said Davey, then added, “a good smell.”
They fumbled for each other’s hands. Nanny Flora kissed his cheek.
“Hello, Davey,” she said. “It sure is nice to meet you.”
“You’ve got the exact same hands as Mama,” he said.
When I showed Nanny Flora the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia, she looked at it with great interest. “It’s the real deal, all right, isn’t it, Lenore?” she said. She turned the pages slowly.
Davey said, “Show her falconry.”
I did. I showed her Florida.
“Well, I’ll be,” she said. “Everything you ever needed to know.”
I showed her beetles. She got agitated. I knew not to tell her I wanted to be a coleopterist. Not yet. Davey was delighted to discover she quite liked Days of Our Lives.
Mrs. Gaspar came. There was a tense stand-off of sorts over Davey. Mrs. Gaspar fussed over him and Nanny Flora fussed over him and they met head to head over him, small springy golden curls versus a large dishevelled beehive. They were opposites. Mrs. Gaspar so dandruffy and unravelly with a big gravelly cough and Nanny Flora so pristine and lily-of-the-valley-smelling.
“He likes his pillow this way,” said Nanny Flora.
“No, he likes it a little higher,” said Mrs. Gaspar. They pushed and pulled at the pillow behind Davey until Mother came and told them to stop.
Mrs. Gaspar sat at the table and glared over the steam of her tea.
Nanny Flora glared right back from her position beside Davey. The prodigal grandmother returned.
But they settled. They had to.
Davey said, “Did you have a dream last night, Mrs. Gaspar?”
“Yes, Davey, I did,” said Mrs. Gaspar, insulted no one had asked her sooner.
“Tell me,” he said. “Please.”
So Mrs. Gaspar did. It was a short one, relatively. There were no horses or dream soups. No magic blankets. But there was the moon.
“I was watching the moon,” she said. “It was rising. Only, it didn’t rise far away in the sky, it rose right beside my bedroom window. It rose and it filled up my whole window and I could smell the moon, the smell of it filled my apartment. It was such a good smell. Such a wonderful smell. It made my stomach growl. Karl and Karla, they howled at that giant moon.”
“What did it smell like?” asked Davey, smiling.
“Well, here is the problem,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “When Karl and Karla howled, I woke up and I could not recall.”
She shook her head sadly.
“Now, now,” said Nanny Flora, in a most tender way. “Perhaps it will come back to you.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Gaspar, in a very kind tone. “Perhaps it will.”
Mother took her cup and patted her on the head.
“I’ll make you more tea,” she said.
“I’ll have one too,” said Nanny Flora.
“Have my tea, Nanny,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “It is good for digestion and breathing.”
“Well, I think I will,” said Nanny Flora. “And you come and sit beside Davey.”
“Oh, no, you keep sitting there,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
And they were models of womanly conciliation.
June 2, 1977
Apartment 15, 762 Second Stre
et
Grayford, Ohio 44002
Dear Martha,
I’m writing to tell you some very bad news. Davey had another operation and some radiation, but it isn’t likely he will get better. Professor Cole said he never saw tumours like the ones Davey has and it’s maybe the only one of its kind on earth. It can’t be stopped and it just keeps growing and Davey just keeps growing too. He is very sick now, though, with all the strain this has put on his heart and on his kidneys, and they say he has sugar disease. The tumour has made him lose his eyesight altogether now, and when Dr. Leopold visited, he said he did not think we had long with our fine boy. I wanted you to know because you have been kind to us these last two years.
Yours sincerely,
Cynthia
* * *
June 12, 1977
Burrell’s Publishing Company Ltd
7001 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46241
OUR GIFT TO YOU IS THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE
Dear Cynthia,
What very sad news. We have been hoping and praying for Davey here at Burrell’s headquarters. We will continue to hope and pray for him. I wish there was some way we could help. Please tell us if there is any way we can help,
Martha
The Canada Goose
No Height Recorded
JULY 1977
Of helping there was much. There was Mr. Engelmann, who came and dismantled the bed and built it again in the living room, where there was more space. “It’s nothing,” he said to our mother. “Why, Mrs. Spink, that is just not a problem at all.”
There was Mrs. Gaspar, who made us soups and sat beside Davey just as long as anyone else. There was Nanny Flora, who washed the sheets that filled up with Davey’s sweat, for he sweated and the apartment filled up with the smell of him and it reminded me of Mrs. Gaspar’s dream of the moon. There was Mrs. Bartholomew and her two oldest daughters, all nurses, who came and set things right and tended to Davey and arranged care from a city hospice: more nurses, who came to the door and left their handbags in piles and sponged him and turned him and cleaned his closed eyes with cotton balls. There was Mr. Kelmendi, who sent flatbread, and Miss Finny, who brought cake, there was Miss Schweitzer, who peered into our little apartment like a visiting ice queen and then dissolved into tears, and Mrs. Gaspar, all shaggy and dog-haired, consoled her at the table and fed her dumplings. There was CJ, who came once with her sisters and leaned over Davey’s head into a gap and ruffled his prairie grass hair.
