Boy, Snow, Bird(48)
“Just come on out,” I said. “Come out right now.”
“Who are you talking to?” said a long-faced boy with red-rimmed eyes. “Hey, is she talking to me?”
Louis gave me a nod. Somebody was going to get their head busted no matter what, and it looked like he’d just picked that somebody at random. He put his fists up, the circle around us broke, poked apart with the steel tip of a parasol, and Grammy Olivia looked through the gap and said: “What in the world is all this? Louis Chen, I hope you don’t intend to hit a girl for the entertainment of these feral beasts gathered here.”
They let us pass. They muttered, but they let us pass. It put me in awe of Grammy Olivia’s Saturday morning coffee hour, because that was part of the reason we went in peace—everyone’s mother, aunt, grandmother, or great-aunt goes to Grammy Olivia’s coffee hour. Also Gee-Pa Gerald regularly plays golf with Worcester’s chief of police, et cetera. Also Grammy Olivia’s tone of voice offers you ten seconds to do as she says or the rest of your life to be sincerely sorry that you didn’t.
She walked ahead of us without turning around, Louis nudged me good-bye and peeled off in the direction of his house, and I went up to her as she was letting herself in at her front door. “Thanks, Grammy Olivia.” She frowned, picked a leaf out of my hair, and said: “You’re welcome, Bird.”
I’d have liked to ask her about what had happened over on Ivorydown; she seemed to understand it. But I didn’t because I thought I might cry while asking her and then she’d wash her hands of me altogether. Grammy Olivia’s got no time for weeping willows; I’ve heard her say so.
Dad was in the parlor, reading the paper and tugging at the collar of his shirt. Dad in a suit is a persecuted man. I asked him what the state of the nation was, and he said the president had taken it into his head to raise taxes and so everybody was probably going to move to Canada out of spite. On a more local level, good old Flax Hill would probably last just about another day. A new restaurant had opened on Colby Street, and Mom and Dad wanted to see about the food there, so they’d booked a table and were going to share it with their friends the Murrays. “Can you see if your mom’s ready to leave?”
“Oh . . . is she doing that ‘every question you ask me adds half an hour to your waiting time’ thing again?”
“She’s a hard woman, Bird.”
Upstairs Mom checked her lipstick while I stood behind her holding two pairs of earrings, a pair in each hand. She’d picked them out and couldn’t decide which to wear. In the mirror I looked like her maid, and that made me want to throw the earrings at her head and run.
For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors. Grammy Olivia avoids her own gaze and looks at her hair. Gee-Ma Agnes peeps reluctantly and then looks glad, like her reflection’s so much better than she could have hoped for. Aunt Mia shakes her head a little, Oh, so it’s you again, is it? Louis tenses and then relaxes—Who’s that? Oh, all right, I guess I can live with him. Dad looks quietly irritated by his reflection, like it just said something he strongly disagrees with. Mom locks eyes with hers. She’s one of the few people I’ve observed who seems to be trying to catch her reflection out, willing it to make one false move. She waved away the earrings I held and reached for a third pair. Gold pendulums. They swung hypnotically, and we looked at each other with those eyes of ours that are so similar.
I asked her what Snow was like. “She’s okay if you like that sort of thing,” Mom said. Denise Arnold had said that about the gold-plated fountain pen Gee-Pa Gerald gave me last birthday. I guess it’s a thing you say when you’re jealous and don’t have the guts to come right out and be sincerely nasty.
“I don’t get it; do you like that sort of thing or not?” I muttered under my breath. Mom kept letters from Snow. She opened them and must have read them, and she kept them in her jewelry box. There weren’t very many, maybe about ten. I’d seen them, but I’d been biding my time. You can’t bide your time forever. I gave Mom a chance to say whatever she wanted to say about Snow, and that was all she wanted to say. So once she and Dad had left for their dinner date I took the letters and I read them. Afterward I felt less sure that Mom wasn’t the enemy. Of course her replies weren’t there, so I wasn’t getting her side of the story. But it looked bad. There’d been months and sometimes years between each letter, so the handwriting changed. It started off big and wonky and basic.
Dear Boy,
How are you? I hope you’re feeling better. How’s Bird? Aunt Clara and Uncle John are nice but I don’t like it here.
All my love,
Snow
Dear Boy,
Don’t you miss me? I miss you and Bird and everybody. Uncle John is like a big black dark mountain and he laughs so loud it makes me jump. Remember you said I could come home thirty days ago.
All my love,
Snow
After a few more letters, Snow learned cursive.
Uncle John and Aunt Clara are perfect treasures. I’m afraid that the way I laugh might be too loud for you now. Dad tells me I make quite a racket. I figured that if I couldn’t beat Uncle J, I’d better join him.