Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen

by Glen Huser

  It’s a triple strand of pearls.

  “Cultured,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Cultured pearls. Quite good quality. Leave them out and we’ll pack them.”

  The pearls glow in the window light, and the beads feel wonderful as I run them through my fingers. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind borrowing some of the other pieces from the old jewelry box. A silver bracelet that looks like a snake. Big chunky gold earrings. But Miss Barclay bangs the lid down, stopping the tinkly waltz in the middle of a note.

  She has a matching set of bright red luggage (surprise!), and she loans me the second-biggest bag so my green dress won’t get crushed.

  Her own opera dresses are long silvery things. One has about a zillion little glass beads sewn all over it. And another has a pattern of swirls that makes you dizzy when you look at it. The Wrinkle Queen treats them like they are precious pets and has me make little nests for them out of tissue paper. She throws in one of those wraps made out of dead rats, too. This one is white.

  “Likely it’ll be warm in Seattle,” she says, “but every once in a while it gets a little cool and drizzly. That reminds me, we should take umbrellas.”

  She points at a list I’m making. I write “umbrellas” beneath “opera glasses.” They have special glasses for looking at opera? Who would have known?

  It takes us most of the afternoon to pack. Mid-afternoon I phone the nursing home and tell them I’m Miss Barclay’s nurse, Stella Havisham, and everything is a-okay. Just a quick question. Should she be taking an aspirin a day along with her other medications?

  Then, at 5:30, when I know everything will be in an uproar at the Shadbolts with Shirl hustling to get supper, and the gremlins fighting over which cartoons to watch, and Herb hunting up a beer and trying to find all the pieces of his newspaper, I give them a call.

  Herb answers.

  “Everything is going great,” I tell him. “Miss Barclay’s ordering a pizza for supper and then we’re going to watch a video. It’ll be fun. Say hi to everyone from me. I’ll phone you in a couple of days.”

  Miss Barclay actually does have a couple of shelves of videos — ones she owns, not just rentals she’s forgotten to take back. But, instead of watching a movie, we decide I’d better practice driving the Buick. She hasn’t made any more noises about doing the driving herself.

  This isn’t like Herb’s Plymouth or Mr. Mussbacher’s Toyota. The Buick has white leather seats and lots of shiny chrome and so many dashboard dials it looks like the flight panel on an airplane.

  Once she’s managed to get into the passenger seat, the Wrinkle Queen pats the dash like it’s some kind of pet.

  First I have to back it out of a garage that must have been built when cars were skinnier. I actually scrape the side view mirror — the one on the side where the Wrinkle Queen is sitting — against the door frame.

  “Are you sure you’ve been taking driving lessons?” she asks. She’s already lit up a cigarillo.

  “Herb didn’t teach me how to back out of a closet.” I feel like grabbing the cigarillo and chucking it into the lane. “Would you mind opening your window? I wouldn’t want to die from second-hand smoke poisoning before we even get started.”

  “Then turn off the air-conditioning,” she snaps.

  “You turn it off. I’m driving.”

  Neither of us say anything as I steer the car down the alley and out onto the street.

  “You can just drive slowly along the crescents here,” she says finally. “No need to get out onto Stony Plain Road any sooner than we have to. When we get back, you can park in front of the house. I hate to think what might happen if you attempt to get this vehicle back into the garage.”

  The Buick is twice as big as Herb’s car. Candy apple red. Give it to the Wrinkle Queen, she means business when she says she’s not into old lady colors.

  We’re back by ten o’clock. And, yes, I did get out onto Stony Plain Road, the one we’ll take out of town tomorrow morning, to get gassed up. It was kind of scary but traffic wasn’t too bad on a Thursday night.

  I can see the Wrinkle Queen is going to be a pain to drive with. I guess you can’t call it backseat driving because she’s in front. Sideseat driving? Some of what she has to say, I need to hear. About one percent. Like which side street will give me a light onto Stony Plain. But the other ninety-nine percent I could do without. Look out for that street fountain...now be sure and signal...I didn’t see you shoulder check...yadda yadda yadda. She’s yammered on so much that she’s practically dead from exhaustion by the time we get back to the house.

  Still, she has some of her brandy in a little glass that looks like it should be hanging from a chandelier. I let her pour me a taste, too. It’s pretty awful, but I pretend I like it.

  We clink glasses.

  “To Wagner.” The Wrinkle Queen raises her glass. “Dreadful man but the source of the most wonderful music ever written.”

  “Dreadful?”

  “Womanizer. Racist. Egomaniac.” The words sound almost like praise the way she says them.

  “To the journey,” I say, “and may all our expectations be met.”

  “Remember, dear.” Miss Barclay drains her glass. “Dickens was being ironic. Maybe, like wearing black dresses, you’re a little too young for irony.”

  18

  It seems like I’ve just fallen asleep when I’m awake again. But it is three o’clock, I can see by the relentless red digits of the clock on my bureau. It’s not easy getting out of bed, but I manage — I don’t want to wake Skinnybones. She’ll need her energy for that drive.

  There’s a kind of wonder to the night. Witching hours, I guess. The light of the street lamp shining through the living-room sheers onto the Persian rug. Without even thinking about it, I make a tour of the house. Very slowly. Using this wretched walker contraption. But slow is fine at night.

  Skinnybones is fast asleep in what used to be Raymond’s room, the one I turned into a study with a pull-out couch. Asleep, she looks as if she were twelve instead of nearly sixteen.

  Lord, Jean Barclay! What have you gotten yourself into?

  In the kitchen, I treat myself to a smoke and another bit of brandy — mindful of its sleep-inducing attributes. When I do get back into bed, the clock reminds me, minute by minute, of the slothlike passage of time. 5:17. And then I do drift off.

  Someone touching my hand stirs me. At first it seems like it might be Mama, waking me to go to school. That’s how she’d do it. Even when I was older and going to Normal School. Just tapping my hand.

  “Time to get up.”

  “Mmm. What time is it?” Can that be my voice?

  And it isn’t Mama. It’s someone else.

  “Seven o’clock.”

  I see it’s the girl. Skinnybones. Her hair all spiky.

  “There’s coffee on.”

  She’s a bundle of energy. Almost doing a little dance as she gets me into the clothes I had her lay out on my bedroom armchair last night.

  “Settle down,” I tell her. “No one’s going to run away with the road. Where are my cigarillos?”

  She’s a terrible driver, I realize, when we get out onto the highway. Poking along ten kilometers below the speed limit, drifting over lane lines, driving half way onto the shoulder at times.

  “You might want to get over and let that dump truck by,” I suggest.

  “God. He’s got other lanes!”

  “But you’re driving in the fast lane and you’re going slower than the rest of the traffic. Now get over.” I haven’t lost it, the voice that could send students hurrying from the classroom into the hall or down to the principal’s office.

  She changes lanes abruptly without a proper shoulder check, and a huge semi blares its horn at her, frightening her so badly that she scoots totally over onto the shoulder and stops. I expect she’s going to cry but instead she just grips the steering wheel and clenches her teeth and utters a couple of choice oaths. It seems like a
good time to light a smoke and settle my own nerves.

  Finally she turns and glares at me.

  “I can only drive if you quit nagging me,” she says, dropping her words like stones, each one thudding. “Otherwise, I can’t concentrate.”

  “All right,” I say, “but if you’re going to kill us, I’d prefer you did it on the way back, after I’ve seen the Ring.”

  “Right.”

  The traffic going west thins out as we get farther away from the city. Most of it is coming into Edmonton.

  And she does seem to steady, the more kilometers we log.

  “Where did you put those tapes?” Over the years I’ve put together a collection I like to listen to on a car trip. Mostly Wagner, but some Puccini and Verdi, too.

  “Under the picnic hamper in the back.”

  She’s not happy about pulling over and rummaging in the back seat for them, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “Ah, there we are.” It’s the top one in the carrying case. “Das Rheingold. Act one. Imagine the scene, Tamara. Water nymphs frolicking in the river water. Music so exquisite it breaks your heart.”

  She thinks I don’t see her but I do. Rolling her eyes.

  “And then the music will change. A dark, ominous undercurrent filled with menace. That’s because Alberich, a dwarf who lives under the river, comes up and begins flirting with them, but they reject him. Alberich spies the gold, though, glinting in the sunlight through the water.”

  For a minute, I close my eyes and see that image, one of my favorites in the whole cycle. When I open them again, I catch Skinnybones stealing a quick glance. Checking, no doubt, to see if I’m still alive.

  “The Rhine maidens tell Alberich if he can renounce love forever, the gold will be his along with magic powers that will allow him to shape it into a ring.”

  “Lord of the rings?”

  “Well...a different story but not all that different.” I push the tape into the slot on the dashboard.

  As we drive, the morning sun makes its own dappled patterns through the trees and across fields, somehow a perfect fit with the Rhine music.

  Yes, it’s all worth it. When you get closer to the end of your life, the decisions you make are shaped by a sense of urgency — a kind of urgency that plays out in slow motion. Last chances, I guess.

  She’s liking the instrumental music, I can see, but when the first Rhine maiden begins to sing, she grimaces, glances at me in amazement, and then begins to giggle.

  “Now be patient,” I say. “Opera singing isn’t something you latch onto the first five minutes you hear it.”

  There’s a small park with picnic tables just off the highway not far from Hinton and we make our first stop there. Tamara looks suspiciously at the outdoor toilets. I don’t think she’s ever seen the like before.

  “We are explorers on the road of life,” I tell her. “You can’t expect there to be hot and cold running water at all the stops along the way.”

  I’m intrigued to see what she’s packed in the picnic hamper for us to snack on. A tin of deviled salmon. Olives. Melba toast. Brandied peaches. A thermos of coffee for me. Perrier water for herself. The hamper is equipped with silverware, glassware and napkins — all the essentials for picnicking during the opera intervals in Seattle.

  It’s a perfect day and, for once, Skinnybones is grinning like a normal teenager instead of practicing her smirky model smile. She laughs as brandy syrup trickles down her chin. Midmorning light filters through the evergreen branches, hopscotching over the glass and silver.

  A family at the next table is eating heart-attack food from cartons. Two little boys watch us solemnly, their open mouths spilling bits of hamburger bun and mustard.

  I catch Tamara’s eye. She raises her bottle of Perrier in a little salute, and I reply with a slight tip of my coffee cup.

  Conspirators.

  19

  I like driving. I mean, I’d probably love it if the Wrinkle Queen could stop griping about how I’m doing for three and a half seconds at a time. Is there anything worse than old L.A. teachers? I finally had to tell her to shut up.

  What’s so great is tearing along the highway and everything flashing by, like in a movie. Green fields and bunches of trees and farms. Some of them even have red barns like you see in picture books when you’re in grade one. Red barns and real cows and horses!

  One time Wilma told me she lived on a farm when she was a little girl. With her grandma. Grandma Schlotter. Feeding chickens, collecting eggs. But then the grandma died and she went back to living with her dad and his third wife in a part of Edmonton where there was a drug house two doors away. Her dad died when she was twelve — got drunk and fell off a fire escape. And her mother — well, Wilma wouldn’t really talk about her. She’d just say, “She’s dead to me.”

  So somewhere I might have a grandmother, but I have a feeling she’s not living on a farm raising chickens.

  When the Wrinkle Queen gets through pouting about not being allowed to sideseat drive, she decides to put on a tape of her opera music. But first, of course, she has to tell me this story about dwarfs and mermaids and a magic ring. I’m thinking this guy Wagner has been drinking more than Rhine water himself. And when the Wrinkle Queen actually quits yattering and turns on the music, it turns out the mermaids are all yodeling and shrieking at one another. God help us.

  We get a break from it all when we stop for lunch. Of course Miss Barclay isn’t into anything normal like going to Wendy’s for a bit of salad. Instead we park ourselves at a picnic table where I get to unload the stuff I packed from the pantry. We snack on petrified toast named after some opera singer who lived a hundred years ago. Petrified toast with some kind of fishy sandwich spread. Good thing I brought a jar of olives.

  The Wrinkle Queen looks like she’s died and gone to heaven, puffing away on one of her skinny cigars underneath a pine tree where a squirrel is running around, up and down branches.

  Back on the road after lunch, I get to hear more of the story of opera number one. The king of the gods and his wife wake up and find out that a couple of giants have built a castle for them.

  “Wotan has promised his sister-in-law Friea to the giants in payment for the castle,” Miss Barclay is saying. “But then he insists it’s only a joke and there’s a huge fight. That’s when Loge the god of fire shows up...”

  She rattles on for about fifteen minutes. I’m beginning to see mountains in the distance. It’s like the farms — hard to believe they’re real. They grow bigger all the time as we get closer, and by the time we actually get up beside them and there are rocks right beside the road that are a hundred times bigger than the Buick, she has the music going full blast again.

  And there are animals like out of a National Geographic special. Elk walking along the ditches, checking out the cars on the road. In a couple of places, mountain sheep with their curved horns, way up on the tops of cliffs.

  “This is the part where Loge the fire god tricks Alberich into putting on a magical helmet, and he turns himself into a toad.” The Wrinkle Queen cackles like she’s come up with the trick herself.

  “We’re going to have to stop in Jasper,” she says. “Like the rest of me, my kidneys are a bit worn out.”

  To tell the truth, the Perrier water has done a job on me, too. There are washrooms in a big old train station which also has a bunch of Greyhound buses and tour coaches parked outside.

  And one RCMP car.

  There’s nobody in it, though, and when I go back into the station to wait for Miss Barclay to come out of the washroom, I see them. Two mounties buying coffees and joking with the girl at the concession stand.

  “Mounties,” I hiss into her ear as I try to hurry her with her walker toward the door.

  “Jasper always has mounties,” she says smugly. “They hire them as a tourist attraction.”

  Of course, the Wrinkle Queen, dressed head to toe in ketchup red, isn’t about to fade into the crowd. I’m sure one of them is watc
hing us from the door as I collapse the walker and stow it and get back into the car. It’s a relief to get out onto the main street and see that there’s no police cruiser in my rear-view mirror.

  We haven’t reached the town limits when she has her opera music blaring again.

  “In this part,” she says, “Wotan collects all of the dwarfs’ gold and forces Alberich to give him the ring.”

  But in a few minutes she’s fallen asleep in her seat and is snoring softly. I find the volume button and turn it way down.

  I’m driving through country with lakes and streams and little waterfalls. Trees. Mountains topped with snow. It looks like pictures on a wall calendar. I’m wondering if Wilma ever got to see this — or was it just the two places in her life. The chicken farm and downtown Edmonton.

  Before I was put in the first foster home, we lived close to the hockey arena. Wilma would let people going to the game park on the lawn for five dollars. One night we were able to get six cars into the yard and Wilma took me and my two half-brothers, Todd and Taran, for pizza. Going out just like a normal family. But when we got home, Todd’s father, Dwight, was there and he and Wilma went to a party and didn’t come home for three days.

  They got back right around the same time the social workers got there.

  I wonder sometimes how Todd and Taran are getting along. Mr. Mussbacher says they’ve always just been in one foster home, a family with three boys of their own, the dad coaching little league hockey, the mom volunteering at their school. Maybe some day they’ll have steady jobs and cars of their own and will be able to go to a hockey game and pay a family five dollars to park in their yard.

  Do models have cars? Mostly I think of them beingdriven around by other people. Photographers and limousine drivers. Or maybe movie star husbands.

  The Wrinkle Queen is moaning and talking in her sleep.

  “Don’t you dare...” she says.

  Probably reaming some kid out for not doing his homework.

  Imagine having her for a teacher. I try to think of what she would have looked like twenty-five years ago when she quit teaching. I bet she had the same black hairdo, just fewer wrinkles. Wearing her killer tomato dresses and too much make-up.