Bursting Bubbles (24 page)

It isn’t just cats that are curious. Marigold leans over the threshold. The living room looks cosy. She leans a little further. A door and a corridor lead off it at the back. There are posters on the walls of the corridor. She takes a few more steps into the room, just to see what the posters are. She can glimpse the kitchen at the end.

Sadie, who has changed out of her school clothes, is coming out of a door on one side, just as the front door opens and her mother starts shouting.

“Sadie! What the hell’s going on? Why is the apartment wide open? How many ti—” She freezes in the doorway just as Sadie has frozen in the middle of the hall. Only Justine is smiling. “Oh, hi. It’s Marigold, right?” The smile comes so quickly that Marigold isn’t sure she saw the rage on Justine’s face half a second before. “I’m sorry I shouted like that. You know how dozy Sadie is. I figured she forgot to shut the door.” She laughs a little. “She’s always doing stuff like that.”

“I hope you don’t mind. I walked her home because it was dark. But I didn’t mean to barge in or anything. I was just waiting for Sadie to see if you were … if you were in.”

“No problem.” Justine comes in and drops her bags in the nearest chair. “It was really nice of you to walk her home, but you didn’t have to bother. I told her if I’m not there when you’re closing up to just come home. It’s not that far.” She’s still smiling, but now it’s a goodbye smile.

“Yeah, well…” Marigold glances over at Sadie, whose only movement since her mother arrived has been to blink. “Well, I guess I better go.”

Back in the outer hallway, she turns to wave goodbye to Sadie just in time to be able to say, when she describes what happened to her friends, that the door was slammed in her face.

Almost immediately, Justine Hawkle starts screaming again.
Who said you could bring strangers in my house? Why can’t you ever do what you’re told? Maybe you shouldn’t go to the after-school programme if it makes you act like this…

Marigold lets herself out, making sure she shuts the house door loudly behind her. But she stays on the porch until the screaming stops. Then she slowly walks down the steps and onto the sidewalk. She glances back at the house as she passes. Sadie is standing at the window, staring out at her as if she’s watching the last rescue boat pull away from the shore.

Marigold waves, but Sadie doesn’t wave back.

It
seems that Mrs Kilgour doesn’t like deep winter. “Bleak as a battlefield after the battle,” said Mrs Kilgour. “If you ask me we should be like bears and hibernate till the spring. We’d all be much happier if we spent January to April with a quilt over our heads.”

And so, as the new year starts, Mrs Kilgour stops. Every time Georgiana is supposed to visit, Mrs Kilgour cancels. She isn’t feeling up to having company. They can’t go out because of the weather. “I haven’t noticed that anyone’s invented a wheelchair on skis,” she says. “How are you going to push me in the snow?” If she had a choice she wouldn’t want to sit in her room, why should Georgiana?

Humans, of course, are not especially known for being consistent. They say one thing, and then do something else. They believe in one thing, and, before you can blink, they believe in its opposite. They’re always changing their minds. Georgiana is not an exception to this rule. Having complained so much about having to see Mrs Kilgour and about Mrs Kilgour herself, now that Mrs Kilgour has stopped her from visiting, that’s the one thing she really wants to do.

“Are you for real?” asked Will. “Now you’re annoyed that you can’t go see her?”

“I guess I got used to her,” said Georgiana. “You know, like you get used to shoes that are a little tight.”

“The way you griped about her it was more like you were wearing concrete blocks on your feet, not too-tight shoes.”

“God, Will,” groaned Georgiana. “You really do exaggerate.”

But it’s more than just getting used to her. Somehow the weeks seem incomplete without Mrs Kilgour. Like fries without ketchup. The fries still taste good, but not
as
good.

And then, for no obvious reason, Georgiana starts to worry about Mrs Kilgour, not just miss her. She remembers what a good time she had at Christmas and pictures her sitting in that miserable blue room all alone. Seeing no one. Talking to no one. Having no one to argue and bicker with. You can’t really talk back to the TV.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: if you don’t ask the question you can’t get the answer you don’t want to hear. So Georgiana doesn’t ask, but arrives at St Joan’s one afternoon without warning, carrying a bag of things to brighten up the winter gloom.

The receptionist is glad to see her.

“I never had a chance to say how great it was that your family had Mrs Kilgour for Christmas,” says Alice. “She really had a good time. I can’t remember when I saw her that happy. It would’ve been a real shame if she’d had to spend the day all alone in her room.”

“We had a good time, too.”

“I was afraid we’d seen the last of you,” Alice goes on as Georgiana signs in. “I’m glad she’s feeling well enough again.”

Georgiana decides against mentioning that she isn’t expected. “Yeah,” she says. “Me, too.”

But if Mrs Kilgour is glad to see Georgiana, she hides it well.

She is sitting up on her bed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt advertising the New Orleans Jazz Festival of 1998. There is a large, red cardboard box on the floor beside her, and so many things on the bed that you can hardly see the spread. She’s just reaching into the box for something when Georgiana knocks, and looks up as Georgiana appears in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” she demands. “I thought I told you not to come.”

“That was last week. Anyway, I’m here now.” Georgiana smiles as if this might be welcomed news. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“I don’t want you in. I told you I wanted to be alone. I’ve never known anyone so contrary. Or so stubborn.”

Georgiana steps inside and shuts the door behind her. “You know, I could say the same about you.”

“All I want you to say is ‘goodbye’.”

“But I brought you presents.” Swinging the bag in front of her, she walks towards the bed. “Look at what I got.” She sets the bag on the table beside the armchair and starts taking things out. “Magazines. Those boring ones you like so much. And flowers to cheer up your room. And look at these!” She holds up a baker’s box. “Fancy cupcakes.”

“Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you. Now if—”

“So what’s all this?” It’s a small room, and Georgiana is already standing beside the bed looking at the things laid out all around Mrs Kilgour. Bundles of papers and letters. Scrapbooks and albums. Manila envelopes filled with newspaper clippings. Odds and ends, and this and that.

“Nothing. Just old things.”

Georgiana cranes her neck. “Like what?”

“Just old things.” Mementos of Mrs Kilgour’s eighty years. A lifetime in a cardboard box. “Pictures mainly.”

Pictures. Georgiana’s heart doesn’t actually skip a beat, but it does stumble. Pictures from Mrs Kilgour’s past. And now Georgiana knows why she had the urge to come today. It was Fate. Fate sent her here. Fate was whispering in her ear:
You want to see Anderson? You want to hear the greatest love story never told? Go to St Joan’s! Go now!

With astounding calm for someone whose heart has stopped stumbling and started stampeding, Georgiana says, “Can I see?”

“You wouldn’t be interested in this old junk.”

“Yes, I would.”

“I’m sure you must have somewhere else to be.”

“No, I don’t. I wanted to see you. I miss…” Georgiana tugs at her hair. “I miss our afternoons.”

Mrs Kilgour doesn’t look at her. “Well, I guess if you’re really interested…” she mutters. “I was just sorting through this box.” She leans over and pulls out a pile of photographs. “I haven’t looked in it in years.”

Georgiana perches on the edge of the bed, prepared to have Mrs Kilgour knock her off.

“When you get bored you can leave,” says Mrs Kilgour. But she doesn’t tell her to move.

Georgiana doesn’t get bored. They go slowly through the pile of photos. Mrs Kilgour’s birthday party when she was four… The house where she grew up… Her parents on a beach… Her high-school graduation… Her first apartment… The dog she had when she was a child… The cat she had when she lived in New York… Mrs Kilgour holds up each picture, and Georgiana looks. Mrs Kilgour explains each picture, and Georgiana listens.

And then, under a photograph of a young Mrs Kilgour in front of a delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is a black and white snapshot of a man in a pin-striped suit, light-coloured shirt and floral tie standing at the railing of a ship, the wind blowing his hair. He’s laughing. “Who’s that?” asks Georgiana.

“That’s the picture I was looking for!” Mrs Kilgour snatches up the rectangle of paper. “That’s him!”

That’s him!
It could only be one person. The great love of Margarita Kilgour’s life.

“Anderson,” says Georgiana.

“Anderson?” Mrs Kilgour looks up at her as if she’s said it’s a picture of George Bush. “Of course that’s not Anderson. That’s Morty.”

“Morty? You mean your husband?”

“Yes, I mean my husband. I hardly have any pictures of him because he was the photographer – always behind the camera, never in front of it.”

“He was a photographer, too?”

“Didn’t I say? That’s how we met. Not war, like Anderson. He managed to stay out of the war, but he was everywhere else something was happening in the sixties and early seventies. Then, when we got married, we decided neither of us wanted to get shot, so we teamed up and did profiles on people and places for magazines. Until we came here and took over the paper. Then he became editor-in-chief.” Mrs Kilgour smiles down at the man who seems almost to be smiling back at her. “This was the day we got married. We took a honeymoon cruise on the Staten Island Ferry.” She closes her eyes. “It was the happiest day of my life.”

“But I thought—”

The eyes open. “What?”

Georgiana shakes her head. Nothing. Everything she thought was wrong. “So your bag? The camera bag? That was your husband’s?”

“It went everywhere with him. It’s the closest thing to having him with me.” She smiles down at the photo again. “Every year we’d ride the ferry for our anniversary.” She sighs the way a twig snaps. “I’d give anything to do it again, just once more before I die.”

Georgiana, trying to come to terms with the fact that Anderson wasn’t the love of Mrs Kilgour’s life, Mordecai Kilgour was, is only half listening. “Well, maybe you will. You’re not going to die yet.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” says Mrs Kilgour.

The encouraging smile that was on Georgiana’s face vanishes. “What? What are you talking about?” Things that she hadn’t put together fall into place. The walk to the river. Coming to Christmas. The special gifts. Searching through the box for the picture of her husband. And these last few weeks of not wanting to see her. What was it Alice Einhorn said?
I’m glad she’s feeling well enough again
.

“I haven’t been too good lately,” says Mrs Kilgour. “You can’t believe doctors, but sometimes they get things right.” She lays the photograph on the table beside her. “That’s why I decided to sort through the box. While I still can.”

Later that night, lying in bed with the lights out, moonlight spilling in through the window, Georgiana finally remembers her grandmother. And starts to cry.

It’s
snowing. There hasn’t been much snow all winter and now, when it should be thinking of stopping or at least slowing down, it’s coming down by the shovelful. Asher – booted, hooded and wearing insulated gloves – stands outside the community centre, banging on the door and trying to peer through the blinds. Assuming that another part of the ceiling hasn’t collapsed, he thinks he sees light inside but the door is locked, and so far no one’s answered his knock. If this kind of thing had never happened before he might just go home, but, of course, it has happened before. Asher bends down and shouts through the mail slot, “Mrs Dunbar? Mrs Dunbar, are you in there? It’s me! Asher! Are you all right?”

He presses his ear to the door, listening for footsteps – and pitches forward as it suddenly swings open just enough for him to be yanked through.

There was a time, not a million years ago, when making this kind of entrance would have discombobulated Asher, but now he simply straightens up and says, “What’s going on?”

“Thank God you’re here,” says Mrs Dunbar. “I was afraid you might not come because of the snow.” She puts her hands together as if she’s about to burst into prayer. “We have a little crisis.”

So what else is new?

Asher stomps the snow from his feet. There is a light on, but it’s a small one and in the furthest cubicle. “Another stalker?”

Two weeks ago Mrs Dunbar locked him out because she was hiding a woman and her two children who had run away from a violent husband only to discover that the women’s refuge had been shut down and there was nowhere for them to go.

“Kind of. But not exactly.” She puts the chain on the door. “Why don’t you come inside and warm up? You look half frozen.”

No, he doesn’t. Asher’s jacket is so thickly padded that what he looks is as if he were made out of marshmallows. Navy-blue marshmallows.

Asher glances from her to the chained door then to her again. “Um, Mrs Dunbar… What are you doing? Shouldn’t we be opening up? The others’ll be here soon.” He peers into the dimness. “Where’s Carlin? Don’t tell me he slept in his car last night.”

“Of course not. He slept at our house. And the others aren’t coming. Not in this weather.”

Asher frowns. He is not his father’s son for nothing. “You mean you told them not to come.”

“Let’s go in the back, Asher.” She won’t meet his eyes. “What about a nice hot cup of coffee? What could be nicer on a morning like this?”