Jam Sandwiches

by Greg Fowler

  As if solely to confirm his fears, when Mrs Stanton led the way out of the room, Grandma Daisy had enough opportunity to bend down by his ear. ‘Tree, you idiot. Tree starts with T.’ Then, with one almighty squeeze of his shoulder, she turned to let him wallow in his own stupidity. She’d be back though and that was the worst part. She always came back and the waiting was excruciating. Eddy could never relax when she was in this sort of mood. Every sound, even the tiniest tinker, would charge his entire body, knowing that she was bound to be back for seconds at any moment.

  Why am I so dumb! I wish I was smart like school.

  T is for Tree.

  As he wiped the evidence of tears away, Eddy realised that he could hear what was being said outside his room. He understood that he probably shouldn’t be listening but at the same time he couldn’t help it.

  ‘Look Mrs Sullivan, I’ll be honest. I have serious reservations that Eddy’s being home schooled at all.’

  ‘I’ll have you know young lady that I spend the best hours of my God given day with that boy. He’s a slow learner. You were the one that warned me about that.’

  ‘Yes, but even despite the Down Syndrome I would’ve expected him to be more advanced by now.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Kids with his condition do struggle academically but in more cases than not their grasp of the basics is delayed, not denied. Eddy’s nine years old and he doesn’t even know the alphabet.’

  ‘Okay, so we’ll try harder. But he’s a simple boy. It just won’t stay in his head.’

  ‘Then maybe home schooling isn’t right for him.’

  No, not the bleeding place.

  T is for Tree and F is for Friends.

  ‘Do you know how hard it is living on a pension these days. It’s more like rations if you ask me. We struggle to put food on the table as it is and you want me to halve his benefit just so he can go and be bullied like a freak of nature all day? No thank you very much.’

  ‘There are hundreds, no, thousands of Down Syndrome children living normal lives out in the real world Mrs Sullivan. They make healthy contributions to society every day. Eddy can have that too.’

  ‘Do you think I want him stuck around this house all day? I’d like a life too you know but God doesn’t hand everyone an ace from the pack. No, all I got was a joker but I’ll make do with it because that’s His plan for me. Like it or lump it.’

  Silence, as thick as mashed potatoes, bounced around Eddy’s head. He daren’t move though, not even to slip an unforgiving shoe off an already blistering heel. Grandma Daisy not only had eyes in the back of her head but she had ears in the walls. Eddy hadn’t seen them yet but, boy, he knew they were there alright.

  ‘Okay,’ sighed Mrs Stanton, ‘how about this then. I’ll give you another 6 weeks to really concentrate on him. I’m not expecting miracles, just a solid improvement. If he shows that, we’ll go on as usual. If he doesn’t……then I might have to make a recommendation to the department that he has proper schooling arrangements. That’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Six weeks isn’t long.’

  ‘It’s all I can give Mrs Sullivan. My neck’s on the line too.’

  ‘Well, we’ll do our best. That boy’s got a plank of wood in there, so big he can’t get his head around it.’

  ‘Six weeks Mrs Sullivan.’

  ‘I know, I know. I heard you the first time. Now if you don’t mind us, we’ve got a busy day ahead.’

  Footsteps in the hallway…heart in the mouth.

  Mrs Stanton poked her head around the door and this time she was smiling again. But it wasn’t a real smile, even plank-in-the-head Eddy could see that.

  ‘I’m going to go now Eddy but your Grandma and I have agreed I’ll be back soon. Okay?’

  Eddy nodded but still struggled to meet her eye. He wished she could stay…for hours and hours. At least until Grandma Daisy wouldn’t be angry anymore.

  ‘Your Grandma is going to help you Eddy. She’s going to help you read. Wouldn’t that be great?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Well, you keep well and maybe next time you can read me one of those lovely books you’ve got on your shelf there. Bye-bye.’

  ‘Say ‘bye’ Eddy,’ prompted Grandma Daisy from somewhere out in the hall.

  ‘Bye Mrs St…Stanton.’

  T is for Tree.

  Eddy listened in cold stillness as four feet made their way down the stairs and two feet left the house.

  That afternoon wasn’t a good afternoon. It was bad. B for bad.

  8. RED TRUCKS AND OTHER NEW THINGS

  Eddy was sitting at the front window, watching the neighbourhood kids mingle and wrangle down at the empty section, when the truck arrived. It was a real big truck with a picture of a chair and a table on the side of it. And it was red, red like a fire truck.

  Trucks hardly ever came down his street. The road wasn’t big enough and, more than anything else, it didn’t go anywhere. So any truck in his street had to have a reason to be there. Even a stupid boy like Eddy knew that.

  The big, red beast drove right by Eddy’s window and the driver, mostly hidden by shadow, gave him a wave. How cool was that! Eddy waved right on back and then was completely enthralled when the truck came to a squeaky halt about two doors down.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  Back it came, the front end swinging out wide, almost catching the far side curb, and the back end slowly but surely carving a path toward the driveway next door. Yep, the truck was actually going to pull in right beside his house.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  As the vehicle reversed deeper into the neighbour’s driveway Eddy switch positions and dashed over to the side window where he hoped to get a better view. Nope, that was no good so it was back to the front window again, where he snuggled up, chin pressed against the window pane, so he could see as much as possible.

  The beeping suddenly stopped and the engine turned off with a wheezy hiss like a dragon laying down to rest after a hard days hunting.

  ‘Did you see that Mr Tree?’ Eddy beamed over at the branch with a look of delight. ‘There’s a b..big truck over there.’

  Mr Tree had in fact been a busy tree. Yes, indeed. Instead of a burgeoning baby twig it was now at least a foot long. Not only that but where there had once been a single virgin leaf there was now a collection of half a dozen, all at various stages of unfurling into the universe that was Eddy’s bedroom.

  Mr Tree was his friend, with a big ‘F’.

  Eddy fiddled with his fingers and crossed and uncrossed his legs, watching, waiting for events to unfold next door. He didn’t have long to wait either. Two more vehicles pulled up outside the neighbouring house. One was a sedan (a ‘normal’ car in Eddy’s world of definitions) and the second was a van, painted the same colour red as the truck and with the same chair and table on the side of it. Out of the van popped four men and they seemed to know exactly what to do straight away. They went to the back of the truck and folded the big red doors wide open like the mouth of a whale. Eddy didn’t know for certain what was in there but he was beginning to have a pretty good idea. And if he was right, well…today was going to be about the most exciting day since Grandma Daisy won a hundred dollars on a horse race and bought him McDonalds.

  Don’t say it yet. Don’t think it. If you do, it won’t come true.

  Then both front doors and one of the back doors of the sedan opened up. A grown up man and a lady got out of the front doors but that hardly held any sway at all when Eddy got a look at who got out the back door. It was a girl. And if Eddy had to guess, she was about the same age as he was. Maybe a year or two younger, maybe a little older, but close enough to be called the same from his perspective.

  Not yet. Don’t say it Eddy. Don’t say it.

  Knowing full well that if Grandma Daisy heard it he’d be in for a world of trouble, but too wound up to stop himself, Eddy knocked hard on the window. Any harder and glass would’ve shattered everywhere, any
louder and police would’ve turned up thinking that shots had been fired. For a slow motion moment Eddy found himself tugged between two ends of an emotional continuum. At one end was the absolute dread that Grandma Daisy was going to come thumping up the stairs and let him have it for trying to ruin her house and, at the other end, dream like delight as both the lady and the girl peered up in his direction. The fact that the lady looked up was kind of alright but when the girl’s eyes fell upon him he felt electricity bounce from the tip of his nose to the tip of his toes. She was really, actually looking at him. And she was beautiful. Not just pretty. All girls were pretty. Eddy reckoned she had lots of friends and she was probably smart too.

  If he’d felt electricity when she’d first spotted him, he went close to nuclear when she waved at him. It was just a little wave but wow, it was the best thing ever.

  I can say it now. I have a friend. F is for friend and T is for Tree.

  Eddy, of course, couldn’t see his own smile…but he could feel it and it almost cramped his cheeks right up as he waved furiously back at this wonderful new adventure in front of him. And, as if Heaven itself had arrived on his front doorstep, she smiled too.

  9. WINDOW TO WINDOW

  It took a long, long time before Eddy saw that girl again. It must have been at least two or three hours. She’d gone inside the house as soon as her Dad had unlocked the front door and since that point it had been nonstop action. The men from the red van had been busy, lugging furniture from the truck to the house, and Eddy thought they were about the strongest people he’d ever seen. He had a book with Superman in it and Eddy reckoned they might just know each other.

  Every now and then he’d spy either the girl’s Mum or Dad at the front door step, looking at some paper and pointing to the men where to go. The Mum smiled a lot. Eddy liked that. He liked that a lot. A smiley Mum and a smiley girl, oh he could almost breathe in the joy. Indeed he tried on more than one occasion that late morning and early afternoon, and when he did he could taste the intoxicating spirit of change and the bountiful evergreen of the new born leaves unfolding in his bedroom.

  As piece after piece of furniture went into the house, Eddy swapped from front window to side window to see which offered the better view at any given moment. He didn’t want to miss a single thing. Once in a while the delivery was meant for the room exactly opposite his own, the one with a mirror version of his own side window. In fact, he reckoned if he really wanted to, he could climb across Mr Tree and right into Smiley Girls’ house. It was the deliveries into this room that intrigued him the most. After all, they gave him the best view of what was going on and, by the time it was all over, this would be the room into which he would face every day.

  There were boxes and boxes and boxes. Eddy thought every box ever made was being unloaded next door. With everything packed away like that he didn’t have a clue what was in them but when two heavy men dragged an even heavier bed into the room opposite he held his breath with bated anticipation.

  More boxes. A chair..a white one. Some drawers…they were white too.

  ‘It’s rude to be nosy.’

  Eddy fairly jumped out of his skin. He’d been so intrigued by all the activity across the way that for once he hadn’t heard Grandma Daisy climbing the creaky stairs. There was a glint in her eye that suggested she savoured the thought of bettering his senses, as if it was a reminder to all concerned who was in fact in charge.

  ‘Th..th..there’s new people next door Grandma Daisy.’

  ‘I can see that, thank you very much.’ Grandma Daisy stepped over to his side and had a good old peek for herself. ‘But like I said, it’s rude to stare. Why don’t you get back to your reading. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do you know.’

  ‘Y..yes Grandma Daisy.’ Eddy dropped his shoulders and trod over to his desk where, since the lady’s last visit, Grandma Daisy had left his learning books. He didn’t like his learning books. They had pictures and things but not like his other books. They weren’t exciting pictures and there was way too much words for his liking. Just looking at them made his heart sink. They made him feel sad. They made him wonder if he would ever have a friend and that maybe Bert and Ernie and Grandma Daisy were right, he was just a stupid boy.

  After the lady’s last visit, Grandma Daisy had told him he had to read the books every day…’no exceptions’…whatever that meant. At first he’d tried, real hard, but he didn’t even know how to start. Every time he so much as opened one of the books up, especially the numbers one, his head went funny. It went hazy and he couldn’t think proper. It’d be so much better if Grandma Daisy would help him. And it’d be even better again if she didn’t keep giving him that look when he couldn’t answer her surprise question tests. Yes, he hated those books alright, and having them piled up right in the middle of his desk like that meant that he couldn’t escape them either. Whenever he cast his eyes around the room they teased him. But still, he did what he was told. Not just today but every day. He didn’t want to be stupid. Stupid boys got hurt.

  Slumping down in his chair he pulled the top book off the pile and flicked the cover open to where a big picture of an apple jumped out at him. Eddy didn’t look up for Grandma Daisy’s approval. Even when he did something right it wasn’t her style to give it anyway. But she was watching him. He could feel it against the back of his head.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, turning her attention back out to the house next door. ‘A for apple.’ With that said, she sighed a deep, tired sigh and strode out of the room, closing the door behind her. She didn’t go straight down the stairs though, she was waiting out in the hallway, ready to trap him if he got back up from the desk. After a couple of stalemate minutes however, Eddy heard her slippered feet make their way down to the lounge. Two of the steps always creaked more than the others. One, two. Two steps.

  Giving it another couple of minutes, just in case, Eddy found a compromise. He pulled the chair away from the desk, a good arms length, so that when he leaned forward he could still look at the learning book and, more importantly, when he leaned back, he could get a half window glimpse of the action across Mr Tree. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  More boxes piled upon more boxes.

  And then…yes it was, Smiley Girl. She sauntered into the room next door with her Mum close behind. Her eyes were big and wide and she was about to say something when she disappeared from Eddy’s limited view. That was way too much for him to handle with poise and, forgetting the books utterly and completely, he got out of the chair and crept up to the window with all the stealth he could muster. He didn’t want to be ‘rude’ and ‘nosy’ because if he was, Smiley Girl might not like him. Instead he huddled up to the very edge of the window pane and peeked one eye around, holding on to Mr Tree’s arm unconsciously as he did so.

  Those, by now familiar, soothing vibrations travelled up his arm and through his body. Green. Yes. Smiley Girl was green. Not in real life of course but this was the colour he sensed when he thought about her. A bright, vibrant green much like the leaves expressing their own vibrancy right beside his hand. He didn’t know what ‘green’ meant exactly but he did know it had a good feeling attached to it.

  There she was, pulling some sticky tape off one of the boxes while her Mum hung a bunch of clothes up in the wardrobe. He watched, enthralled as she pulled the flaps of the box apart, reached in nice and wide and, with more than a little effort, stood up tall with a big plastic house grasped in her hands. It was just like a real house, only much smaller and it was about the best toy Eddy reckoned he had ever seen, in his whole entire life.

  ‘Look Mum,’ Smiley Girl called out, her voice floating on the air like silver dancing with gold. ‘I found it.’

  ‘Good girl,’ responded her mother, still unloading an endless stream of clothes into the wardrobe. ‘You can play but don’t get in the way of the movers, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Smiley Girl took the toy house and plonked it down on a handy box. Handy for h
er and handy for Eddy too because it was high enough so he could see just what it was she was doing. When she pulled the front of the house wide open, just like opening a door, he couldn’t help but slink out of his hiding spot so he could watch over her shoulder. Inside the house were rooms, lots of little rooms and if his eyes weren’t cheating on him there was tiny, baby furniture in there too. Wow, that must’ve cost about a million dollars. Grandma Daisy would never buy him anything like that. The best she ever got him for birthdays and Christmas was toys from the McDonald’s store.

  And was that a teeny, tiny person in one of the rooms upstairs? Eddy leaned forward, straining to be certain about the message his eyes gave him. He was so intent that, when Smiley Girl suddenly turned around, he was caught completely by surprise. It was only pure fear that made him react as fast as he did. For a millisecond their eyes met and then he was gone, diving back around beside the window with his chest pounding so hard it echoed in his ears.

  Jeepers, jeepers, jeepers. I think she saw me.

  Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Would she tell on him?

  Eddy waited for his heart to go from BOOM, BOOM to pitter patter again. He didn’t know how long that was but it seemed awfully long to him. Surely she’d be back playing with her house by now. He would be if he had a cool toy like that. Inch by anxious inch, he edged back toward the window, his back planted against the wall like it was his only barricade amidst a charging enemy. When he could safely go no further and his shoulder budged against the pane he found himself caught in a spiralling game of ‘now, no, now’. He must’ve gathered his wits a dozen times and backed down eleven of them before he finally mustered the willpower to peek around the corner, where in all likelihood he expected to find Smiley Girl back at her little house.

  But she wasn’t. Oh no, she most definitely wasn’t.

  There she was, standing loud and proud in her window, staring straight back out into his room like a statue.