Bursting Bubbles (11 page)

Claudelia isn’t the only one. Dr Kilpatiky has been keeping an eye on how the new system is working, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Georgiana Shiller not only had a glowing report from St Joan’s but is putting in more time than she has to as well. Dr Kilpatiky commended Georgiana on this only last week. The principal is rather pleased with herself, too; she thinks it’s proof that she was right.

When they pull up in front of Claudelia’s, she says, “Thanks, George. And have fun this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry.” Georgiana smiles back. “I will.”

Which turns out to be, if not a lie, a misconception.

Life may not always be a party, but Georgiana can’t help thinking that, if you try and, yes, let’s use a word more normally found in Marigold Liotta’s vocabulary, persevere, you can make most days the run-up to the party – when you’re full of plans and anticipation (before you ruin your favourite dress or catch your date flirting with another girl).

As proof of this theory, Georgiana is humming a catchy, upbeat tune from the radio as she pulls into the parking lot at St Joan’s. It would be an exaggeration to say that she’s been looking forward to this afternoon the way a hungry girl looks forward to lunch, but she is far from unhappy. It certainly isn’t the torture she was expecting. If all her classes could be like her community service placement, Georgiana would never complain about school again. Not ever. (Or not much.) Indeed, if she could get credit for sitting at the back of history or language arts while on her phone, she’d be one of the best students Shell Harbour High has ever known. This is the life. It’s almost as good as getting paid to go shopping.

Georgiana gives Alice at reception a cheery wave as she strolls up to the desk. She fills in her time of arrival on her sheet, and, with another cheery wave, heads down the corridor to Mrs Kilgour’s room, smiling at everyone she passes, no matter how decrepit and likely to fall over they are. She takes hold of the doorknob to Mrs Kilgour’s room, and, without bothering to knock or call out, walks in, her phone already in her hand.

Georgiana screams. It is an attention-grabbing scream. If Georgiana were in a movie she would have screamed because there was a scene of blood and horror or a mob of zombies behind the door. But she isn’t in a movie, she’s at St Joan’s, and behind the door is Mrs Kilgour. She is sitting in her chair in front of the soap opera playing on the TV, wearing her pink robe over a white T-shirt and red plaid flannel house pants, and her Yankees baseball cap. An unsuccessful attempt has been made to apply lipstick to her mouth and rouge to her cheeks, making her look like a very old doll. A very old doll that has come to life. Because instead of facing the set, Mrs Kilgour is facing the door; and instead of being sound asleep, Mrs Kilgour is wide awake. Being awake does nothing to improve her looks.

She points the remote at Georgiana as if it’s a gun. “Who the hell are you?” Her voice is surprisingly strong and clear for a woman of her age. “Who said you can just barge into my room like the FBI?”

Georgiana has as many faults as anyone else, but rudeness isn’t one of them. “I–I’m sorry,” she quickly apologizes. “I–I thought you were sleeping.”

“Do I look like I’m sleeping?” No, she certainly doesn’t. “Although it is obviously a disappointment to you, I am very much awake. The question is: who in creation are
you
?”

“I–I’m your volunteer visitor.” Georgiana is far from recovered from the shock of finding Mrs Kilgour wide-eyed and angry, but does manage to shut the door behind her so the old lady’s shouting doesn’t bring a nurse or aide rushing to her rescue.

“My
what
?”

Georgiana may have no experience with the elderly, but she does know that you have to speak to them slowly and loudly. Slowly and loudly, she repeats, “Your volunteer visitor, Mrs Kilgour.”

“My volunteer visitor.” Mrs Kilgour’s lips curl in what Georgiana takes for a smile. There is lipstick on her front teeth. “You mean as opposed to my involuntary visitor?”

Georgiana has no idea what she’s talking about. “Your involuntary visitor?”

It isn’t as hard to confuse a smile with a sneer as you might think.

“Yes, dear. You know. The one who shows up because evil forces in the universe make her come here against her will.”

She must be senile. She probably doesn’t even know where she is.

“I come from the school. The high school? From Shell Harbour?”

“This isn’t Shell Harbour,” snaps Mrs Kilgour. “We’re miles from Shell Harbour. What are you, lost?”

So she does know where she is.

“No, I’m not lost. I go to school in Shell Harbour, but I’m here for my community service. I’m your volunteer visitor.”

Mrs Kilgour’s voice becomes high and childish. “Oh, you’re here for your community service. Aren’t you a Good Samaritan. Your parents must be very proud.”

Georgiana has never been mocked by an octogenarian wearing a baseball cap before. “Yes, I… No, I mean…We do it as part of our curriculum. I—”

“And that’s
me
, is it? I’m not a human being. I’m not flesh and blood and a beating heart? I’m a community service? Like picking up soda cans on the highway? Is that what I am, a rusting can of Coke?”

“No, of course not. I—”

“You want some advice? Never get old. This is what happens when you get old. Strangers barge in on you whenever they want, trying to stick you in a garbage bag because you’re no use to anybody any more.”

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t knock. I’m…” She takes a deep breath and tries again. “I’m Georgiana. Georgiana Shiller. I’m here to visit you. You know, to be a little company for you. Didn’t they tell you I was coming?”

“Of course they told me.” She softens her voice, speaking in very much the same talking-to-a-small-child tone that Georgiana’s been using to her. “Ooh, Mrs Kilgour, you’re going to be having a visitor. A spoiled teenager who thinks life is a shopping mall. She’s from Shell Harbour, where the rich people live. Won’t that be nice? You’d like to see a rich person up close before you die, wouldn’t you?”

“Mrs Kilgour—”

“But that was weeks ago.” Her voice is normal again. Normal being brash and sarcastic. “What’d you do? Walk here via Tibet?” Then she shakes her head, arguing with herself. “No, that’s ridiculous. I doubt you could find Tibet even by accident. You were probably just busy on that Web thing, telling everybody what you had for lunch.”

“Mrs Kil—”

“Time may mean nothing to you, but I don’t have a lot of it left at my age. I gave up waiting. I figured you’d had a better offer or found some other poor soul to torment.” She eyes Georgiana’s right hand. “Or lost your phone and didn’t know how to get here.”

There’s no use making up some excuse, since the old bag doesn’t listen. And anyway she wouldn’t believe her if she did listen; she has her mind made up. “I’m not here to torment you, Mrs Kilgour,” says Georgiana with a patience no one who knows her well would recognize. And loudly and slowly. “I’m here to help you. Be your friend.”

“Help me? Be my friend? How could you be my friend? You’re not even old enough to vote.”

Georgiana clamps her mouth shut.
And you probably voted for Lincoln
.

“Look at you!” Mrs Kilgour jets on. “You couldn’t look more like a princess if you were wearing a crown.”

Look at you! You couldn’t look more like an evil troll if you were hiding in a cave
.

“Princess La-di-dah. Clutching that damn contraption in your hand like a second of silence would kill you! And all dressed up like you’re going to a ball. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the jungle. Not five lousy minutes. What are you going to help me do? Shop? Pick out a pair of shoes? Throw a party?”

Georgiana puts the hand holding the damn contraption behind her back. “Well, luckily for us, we’re not in the jungle, are we, Mrs Kilgour? So there are lots of things I can help you with. And shopping’s one of them. You know, if there’s anything you need.”
A life … a personality…
“Or if you want me to do something for you.”

“Do something? Do something like what?”

Georgiana pulls at her hair with her free hand.
Like lock you in the closet, you old bat. And throw the key into the ocean
.

“Well … there must be lots of stuff you can’t do yourself.”
See well, or climb a ladder, or remember what you had for breakfast…
“I can help you. Like maybe if you need a needle threaded or—”

“A needle threaded?” She sounds so indignant, you’d think Georgiana suggested teaching her to break dance. “Why would I want you to do that? I haven’t sewn a damn thing since nineteen eighty-five.”

Well, excuse meeee…

“We could play a game…” Hide-and-seek. Georgiana could be back in her car before Mrs Grumbles counted to three. “Do you like games?” Not tennis, obviously. “Cards or board games?”

The eyes behind the smudgy glasses look at her with new interest. “Poker? You play poker? Stud or Draw?”

“No, no, I don’t play poker.” Georgiana’s only knowledge of poker comes from movies in which a bunch of overweight men sit around smoking, wisecracking and occasionally threatening each other’s life while they shove plastic chips into the middle of the table. Not a bunch of old ladies. “But I do play bridge.”

“You play bridge. With two people you play bridge?” The interest is gone and the sarcasm is back. “And how does that work? Do we get dealt double hands? Do we have to keep switching our seats?”

There are other people in the building
, thinks Georgiana.
Not that any of them would want to play with
you. Y
ou miserable kvetch
.

Just as Robinson Crusoe, marooned on his island, continued to behave as a civilized man, Georgiana Shiller, stranded in Mrs Kilgour’s rudeness, continues to be polite. “Well, what about rummy? Do you play rummy?”

“Animal rummy? Is that what you play? Do you play it on your genius phone?”

“Or Scrabble.” Robinson Crusoe raised his crops, and built his house, and read his Bible. Georgiana smiles. “I’m pretty good at Scrabble. I could bring my set next time.”

Mrs Kilgour smiles, too. “I’m sure that’s very kind of you, but to me that almost sounds like a threat.”

Georgiana clamps her mouth shut for a second so the words that popped into her head –
Don’t worry, you’ll know when I’m threatening you
– don’t actually come out.

“Well, if you don’t want to play a game we could go for a walk.” Georgiana would like to walk. She’d like to walk out. Just turn around and go home. Would she have to come back? Would she get into trouble? But what about Dr Kilpatiky? Would Georgiana lose the Brownie points she’s earned? Would Dr Kilpatiky give her a placement that’s even worse?

“A walk?” A laugh is not always happy. “And what do you think that thing over there is?” The thing over there is a wheelchair. “Do you think if I could walk more than a few feet I’d have one of those?”

“I meant that I’d walk, and push you.” Straight into traffic, if she could.

“And where would we walk?” She waves towards the window at the concrete courtyard, dressed up today by a covering of colourful if dead leaves. “Out there in the prison yard? Or I suppose we could walk in the building – it depends on how fascinated you are by hallways.”

“What about the common room Mr P showed me? There’ll be—”

“Nothing to do but watch TV. Which I can do here. And which I’m going to do here. You can do what you want.” She turns towards the set. “And stop shouting at me,” she shouts. “I’m not deaf.”

Georgiana can’t leave for another forty-five minutes. “So what am I supposed to do if you’re just going to watch TV?”

“Maybe you could thread a needle.”

She sticks out her tongue at Mrs Kilgour’s back and sits down on the edge of the bed. Gingerly. And turns on her phone.

It’s
starting to seem to Asher that there are more Saturdays in a week than there used to be. He barely survives one than another is looming up in front of him like a three-headed, fire-breathing monster wearing a necklace made from the skulls of its victims. The fact that Asher’s skull isn’t yet on the necklace is a testament to something, but he’s not sure what. Dumb luck maybe. A desire to prolong his suffering probably.

Today it is already dark by the time Asher leaves the community centre and staggers to his car. “Goodnight, Asher,” Mrs Dunbar calls after him, loudly enough to have everyone with that name in the county look around. “See you next week!”

Not if I see you first
, thinks Asher.

What really hurts – besides his back, his arms and his pride (the backed-up toilet was really disgusting and not a job for a future leader of the nation) – is that he used to love Saturdays. Saturdays were laid-back days – that pause in the week when not every minute of his time was accounted for. Sure, there was his kung-fu class first thing, but after that the day was pretty much his. He could go to brunch or lunch with Claudelia. Go to a game or throw a few baskets with Will. Play computer chess or do an hour of Mandarin online. Go for a swim. Work out. Some afternoons there would be a fencing competition. He might even do nothing for a whole hour, just sit in his room listening to music or catching up on the sudokus in the week’s newspapers. But not any more. Now his Saturdays belong to Mrs Dunbar and the Queen’s Park Community Centre. It’s as if he sold his soul to the Devil.

When Asher gets home the lights of the Grossmans’ house burn brightly along the driveway, over the front porch and behind the living-room window and the upstairs hall, welcoming him home. Which makes them the only things that do welcome him home. Albert is in Brussels this week – or somewhere like Brussels – and Mrs Swedger, the Grossmans’ housekeeper, has weekends off. The lights are all on timers.

But despite the lack of anyone to greet him, Asher is as glad to be home as Odysseus was when he finally arrived back in Ithaca after ten years of harrowing adventures. Partly he’s glad to be home because Will’s coming over to watch the Saturday game, something he’s been looking forward to all week; but mainly he’s glad because he would be glad to be anywhere that’s not the Queen’s Park Community Centre. Even a Greyhound bus, awash with germs and contagious diseases, would be better.