The Latchkey Kid

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The Latchkey Kid Page 22

by Helen Forrester


  As she waited for the water to boil for the coffee, she thought about the pile of washing waiting to be put into the machine at home. She remembered that, had she stayed at home to do it, all she would have heard throughout the day would have been the slosh of the water in the washer and the hum of the dryer, interspersed with commercials if she had turned on the radio. Any telephone calls would almost certainly have been for Hank or for Boyd. The front door bell would have been unlikely to herald anyone but a collector for charity.

  If she had been less tough, she would have wept with self-pity. As it was, she felt that she might just as well stick around to please Mrs. LeClair, as face such a dull and empty day alone.

  To get all the children to drink their milk proved a slow task, and Mrs. Stych’s coffee was left to get cold on the kitchen counter, as she struggled to get small fingers to grasp their glasses. All the mothers were anxious that the children should learn to feed themselves. They were not sure how to go about this, but they repeated the same movements every time they tried, and they had succeeded in getting some of the children to grasp their cookies or sandwiches, and two boys could drink from a glass.

  A ripple of rejoicing went through the patient helpers when it was whispered that Henny had picked up her cookie and had, moreover, aimed it for her mouth. She had had to have help to actually eat it, but this tiny effort on the part of a single child gave new impetus to the day’s work.

  Mrs. Stych was bewildered that such a small movement could be construed as a victory, but she managed to murmur politely that it was just wonderful.

  The mothers, after discovering that she herself did not have a subnormal child, received her assistance with every demonstration of gratitude, and several of them expressed wonderment that she should be so good as to interest herself in their problems.

  She helped fairly willingly to prepare a simple lunch from ingredients brought by the mothers, after which some children were taken home, and three other mothers arrived with a total of five more children among them. All the time, Mrs. LeClair, drawing on her experience in Montreal, trotted up and down the hall, encouraging, organizing, instructing. Her hair grew wilder, her hands became grubbier, as the dust from the floor rose, and she looked like some demented female from skid row, rather than the wife of a man making enough money each year to buy the whole church hall. One mother said wistfully she wished Mrs. LeClair could stay in Tollemarche long enough to get the school on its feet.

  In the afternoon Mrs. LeClair asked Olga to learn from another mother the principles of patterning. Mrs. Stych was informed that when the brain had been damaged so that the child could not control its limbs properly, it was sometimes possible to teach another part of the brain to take over, if the limbs were exercised several times a day in the pattern of behaviour normal to them. The task, even to help one child, was a stupendous one, more than a mother alone could hope to achieve; sometimes in large families, it was possible to recruit enough people to take turns at exercising the child, but in most cases outside help had to be found.

  “Twenty-four girls from Tollemarche Composite High School take turns coming to our home,” explained the mother who was teaching Mrs. Stych, “to put Beth through her exercises.”

  Mrs. Stych was astonished. “High school kids!” she exclaimed.

  “Sure,” the mother confirmed, as she smiled down at the golden-haired Beth, and then said to the child: “You’ve got lots of friends, haven’t you, honey?” She bent and kissed the smiling face, as she continued: “When we started, she lay on her back and propelled herself along with wriggles. Now she can crawl on her tummy.”

  The mother looked down with such obvious adoration at Beth that Mrs. Stych felt embarrassed. She had never felt like that about Hank.

  Mrs. Stych was invited to try doing the exercising. The child at first whimpered at her touch, but Mrs. Stych was very careful and she soon submitted more cheerfully to the manipulation of her legs, arms and back.

  Many years before, Olga Stych had been a bright Ukrainian country girl doing her first year in college, the only Ukrainian in her class. Her teachers had told her that she had brains and should use them, so Olga had had a dreamy ambition of becoming a doctor or a lawyer, a Portia or at least a Florence Nightingale. Then she had, from many acid remarks and much cold-shouldering, learned that a Ukrainian was an ignorant, peasantlike clod. She became ashamed of her Ukrainian surname, and it seemed her Greek Orthodox Church connections were fit only for the illiterate. To struggle towards a profession with the two strikes against her that she was both a woman and a Ukrainian would be too hard, she decided. She therefore concentrated on finding a husband who was not a Ukrainian.

  No Scottish boy would look at her; they could look much higher for a wife – theirs was the kingdom, thought Olga bitterly – and when Boyd Stych had offered himself, it had seemed a good compromise. And he had really loved her, thought Olga wistfully, as she bent Beth’s small legs in the direction they should go.

  Now, as Olga warmed to the work, she began to think, as she had not thought for years, about Boyd, about the children round her, even, rather painfully, about Hank, and she forgot about that very important personage, Mrs. Olga Stych.

  By half past three Mrs. Stych was ready to drop dead with fatigue. Her blouse was stuck to her back with sweat and she guessed that there was not a scrap of makeup left on her face. The mothers were dressing the children, and a graceful, expensive-looking blonde had dressed both Henny and her own child in their heavy winter clothes. Mrs. Stych thankfully rescued her car coat and boots from the cloakroom.

  She took Henny by the hand to try and get her to climb the steps to the front door.

  “Ah, you have the idea, Mrs. Stych,” exclaimed Mrs. LeClair, pouncing upon her as she waited for Henny, who, hampered by her snowsuit, was making a not very successful try at climbing the steps. “Always make the child do as much as it can.” She patted Mrs. Stych’s arm. “You will come tomorrow, of course. We need all the help we can get.”

  “Well …” began Mrs. Stych, trying to make a determined stand.

  Mrs. LeClair clapped her on the shoulder. “Ah, I knew you would! You will feel so rewarded.”

  Mrs. Stych opened her mouth again and managed to commence: “But …” when Henny, stranded on the second step up, began to howl, her head winding to and fro like that of a serpent.

  Mrs. Stych bent and set the child’s hands firmly on the third step, and laboriously she climbed another. By the time she had got the rhythm of climbing, Mrs. LeClair had darted to the other end of the hall, to assist a mother with a Karrykot.

  Mrs. Stych’s lips narrowed to a thin line. She was not accustomed to people rushing off when she wished to speak to them. If Mrs. LeClair had no time for her, she had no time for Mrs. LeClair; she would not come tomorrow – nobody was going to make her work like a slave for a pack of crazy kids.

  Henny allowed herself to be buckled into her car seat without demur. Mrs. Stych climbed in beside her and glanced down at her in disgust.

  Quite unexpectedly, Henny looked up at her and laughed like a young baby. The empty face with its slightly protruding tongue looked for a moment no different from that of any other tiny girl, and Mrs. Stych hastily looked back at the road.

  Dr. and Mrs. van der Schelden greeted Mrs. Stych and Henny, on their return, like long-lost kissing cousins. Dr. van der Schelden was a huge, fair-haired man and he nearly wrung Mrs. Stych’s hand off as he thanked her for all she had done. Mrs. Stych felt so guilty about her dislike of Henny that she blushed and said hastily that she had done nothing at all.

  She took gratefully the chair offered to her – she had not felt so tired for months – and accepted the hot coffee pressed upon her by Dr. van der Schelden. It was very pleasant to be made a fuss of, and her face gradually resumed its normal colour.

  “Mr. Frizzell took me to the hospital again,” reported Mrs. van der Schelden, “and sat with Michael in the waiting-room while the doctor look at my hand. H
e also is so good.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. van der Schelden. “He has also suggested that he gets together a committee of interested businessmen, to raise funds for a proper school for Henny and the other children. Do you think he could do it?”

  Mrs. Stych assured him sourly that Maxie could do anything he set his mind to.

  “Would it not be wonderful, Mrs. Stych?” asked Mrs. van der Schelden, patting Mrs. Stych’s hand gently.

  Mrs. Stych agreed that it would be, and wondered privately what the hell Maxie had in his head to suggest such a thing. Anything Maxie did always benefited Maxie in the end.

  On the doorstep, her conscience pricked her and she said: “I’ll take Henny again tomorrow – your husband will have a lot to do for you and Michael.” Maxie Frizzell was not going to be allowed to outdo her.

  Mrs. van der Schelden’s wide blue eyes moistened. “Would you do so? That would be so kind,” and before Mrs. Stych could stop her, she had put her arms round the elder woman’s shoulders and kissed her.

  Mrs. Stych could not remember when another woman had last kissed her; they had toadied to her, deferred to her, tried to squash her, fought to keep her down, all with the sweetest of smiles over their teacups, but nobody had kissed her with warmth and gratitude before. Her face was still pink as she walked slowly through the snow across the adjoining lawns to her own front door and let herself in.

  On the Frizzell’s front lawn, a baby-sitter and two of the Frizzell grandchildren were making angels in the snow, and Mrs. Stych was reminded uneasily of Hank.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mrs. Stych felt better after she had taken a shower, put on a loose red housecoat and a pair of red mules, and combed her hair. She felt too tired to paint her face. She did, however, go down to the basement and set the washing machine going with its first load of sheets; then she prepared a supper for Boyd and herself. Brown-and-serve meat chops were soon slapped into a frying pan and frozen chips put into the oven to defrost.

  She laid the table in the breakfast nook for two people, and wondered where Hank would eat. A pang of conscience struck her – perhaps she should not have bawled him out quite so hard. Fancy if he had been like one of those kids she had been working with! What would she have done?

  She squirmed inwardly as she answered her own question. She knew she would have repudiated him and put him in a home. As she worked, she uneasily compared the care given to Mrs. LeClair’s exceptional children with that given to the children in her own circle.

  “It’s ridiculous,” she told herself defiantly. “So much fuss spoils kids – it isn’t good for them – they gotta learn to be independent.”

  Absorbed in her own reflections, she did not bother to greet Boyd when he came into the kitchen, grey and tired. He went straight to the refrigerator to get himself a glass of rye.

  He eyed her tentatively over his glass, surprised to see her arrayed in her best housecoat. He reminded himself that he had yet to tell her that Mayor Murphy would not part with one of his lots in Vanier Heights, because he was waiting for the price to rocket even higher. He slumped down in a chair and finished his drink quickly, after which he felt strong enough to say “Hi” to his wife.

  “Hi,” she said back.

  “Where’s Hank?”

  “Dunno”.

  “Didn’t see him this morning. Mebbe he’ll be in for supper.”

  She looked at him, and her lips curled. “I doubt it,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She took the potato chips out of the oven before she replied. Then she said carefully: “Said he’d eat out.”

  Boyd sensed that something was wrong. He spun the ice cube round and round in his empty glass. The rye was warming him, and he felt better.

  “Something happen?” he asked, pouring a little more rye onto the ice cube. He guessed that Hank was doing one of his usual fast retreats from an unpleasant situation. Presumably Olga was still mad about the book. He watched his wife out of the corner of his eye as he drained his glass again. Her face had hardened, and he felt an unexpected pity for his son.

  “I just told him he must pay his board now he’s working.”

  Boyd ran his tongue round the tips of his teeth. It was not an unreasonable request for a mother to make. He wondered, however, how she had approached the subject.

  “What did he say?”

  She put a plate of chops and chips in front of him, following it with a knife and fork and a bottle of ketchup. He put down his glass and picked up his fork, still watching her.

  She filled the coffeepot and put it on the stove to percolate.

  “Said he’d pay rent and eat out,” she said as laconically as she could, under his distrustful gaze.

  Boyd slowly laid down his first forkful of chop and said in a shocked voice: “Now, Olga, he’s not some student boarding with us. That won’t do.”

  Mrs. Stych brought her plate to the table and sat down. “That’s what he wanted, that’s what he got.”

  Boyd stared at her. He had never taken much interest in Hank. He had been away from home so much that he had, in fact, frequently forgotten the boy’s existence for months at a time. But this upset his sense of propriety. It savoured of his grudging his son food from his table, which he did not. It offended his sense of western hospitality, a hospitality which demanded that even strangers be fed like fighting kings, and his bulging refrigerator kept full for the use of the family.

  His wife was looking mutinous, so he said heavily: “I’ll talk to him when he comes in.”

  “You’ll have to be quick,” she snapped. “Says he’s goin’ to Europe soon.”

  He knew that the smallest spark would light the fires of temper and she would start a tantrum, so he tried to eat his dinner.

  The long evening he and Hank had spent together, when Hank had first told him about his literary success, had established a friendliness between them, quite separate from any fatherly feeling which Boyd might reasonably be expected to harbour for the boy. Boyd had first been amazed, and then had felt a sneaking admiration for a youngster who could defy a whole town and its heavily paternal school board, and make a small fortune out of it. He knew that Olga had lost some friends through Hank’s choice of subject, but he had no desire to see the boy bullied out of the house because of it.

  Olga ate her dinner and then retired to the basement, to sulk over the washing, leaving Boyd to wash the dishes.

  A stony-faced Hank came home about nine, to find his mother had gone to bed. His father was, however, sitting smoking in his den, with the door open. He got up as Hank came through the living-room, and stood at the door of his room.

  “Hi, Son,” he said tentatively; and, in spite of his own preoccupation, Hank noticed the weary droop of the elder man’s shoulders and his general air of anxiety.

  “Hiya, Dad.”

  “Come in here. I want to talk to you.”

  Hank was immediately on guard, but went in and took the chair indicated by Boyd.

  “What happened between you and your Ma this morning about board money?”

  Hank relaxed, and told his father what had occurred. Finally, he said: “Honest, Dad, I just forgot. I’m not mean. Only she didn’t ask so nice.” He grinned sheepishly. “Guess I’m not altogether used to being independent.”

  Boyd laughed. “It’s O.K. I’ll fix it with your mother. You had better pay something – you have to get used to standing on your own feet – and one day you’ll be having to make your wife an allowance.” He changed the subject. “Your mother said you’re going to Europe?”

  “Yeah, thought I’d travel around for a while. I got a book coming along just fine. Feel I oughta see sumpin’ before I settle down.”

  Boyd sat silent. He had gone away from home to university at eighteen, so he supposed Hank would be all right. He remembered he had promised to help Hank invest his earnings, and thought he had better mention this.

  “Do you want me to do anything about the money you’ve got, while
you’re away?” he inquired.

  “Sure, Dad. Not all of it’s in yet, of course.”

  “Do you like to give me power of attorney?”

  Hank had been considering this for some time, but his distrust of both parents was so great that he had not been able to convince himself that this would be a wise move. Boyd could see that his question was causing some confusion to Hank, though he fortunately did not realize why.

  The boy stirred uneasily. “Think I’d sorta like to sign everything myself. I’ll be in London, and stuff don’t take so long by air mail.” He hastened to add: “I think your advice was great – and I wanna do just what you suggested – but I’d have a better picture of how I stood if I signed everything myself.”

  “O.K.” said Boyd. “I’ll fix it – you give me an address. Would London be where Mrs. Dawson has gone?”

  Hank flushed crimson and Boyd had to laugh, despite his anxiety that the boy might marry too young.

  “O.K., O.K.,” he smiled, “I won’t ask. Just be careful what you do. She’s a real nice girl and you have to give a girl like that a square deal. She’s no Betty Frizzell.”

  The colour which had suffused Hank’s face drained as rapidly as it had come. Boyd’s idle remark had hit a raw nerve; Mrs. Stych was not the only member of the family who had noted the appearance of Betty’s eldest boy. Hank had seen him and had felt thoroughly sick; he wondered how he could have gone near such a girl, and he wondered, too, how he could ever approach Isobel after the kind of life he had led up to now. He felt like crawling on his knees to her; he could understand how men could humble and humiliate themselves before women to gain their forgiveness.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, Dad,” he said, his expression so desolate that Boyd began to worry about him as he never had before.

  CHAPTER 29

  Two days later Hank left for New York, on his way to London. He hardly spoke to his mother and did not bid her goodbye. She was surprised to find after he had gone that he had cleared his room and packed all his possessions into cardboard boxes, which he had transported into the basement storeroom, stacking them neatly in a corner, so that she could hardly complain that they took up too much space. His bedroom looked like a hotel room, without a personality.

 

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