Bursting Bubbles (7 page)

Marigold points to it. “Is that yours?”

From the way Sadie’s eyes gaze ahead blankly, it’s possible she only communicates through telepathy. Which is not an ability Marigold has.

“Is that your backpack, Sadie?”

A few more minutes pass as slowly as camels crossing the desert in wellies.

Finally, Sadie nods, a movement so slight it’s a wonder that Marigold sees it.

“I thought it must be!” crows Marigold. “Do you have a book to read in it?”

This, too, is a question Sadie feels she can’t answer hastily. It takes another five minutes to establish that there is a book in the backpack, and another ten to get the book out of the backpack.

“Wow,” enthuses Marigold as Sadie drops the book onto the desk in front of her. “I haven’t read this before. It looks really interesting.”

It’s a picture book about a family of elephants.

“Do you like elephants, Sadie?”

Sadie is no longer staring at Marigold but at the cover of the book.

“Why don’t we open the book, and start from the beginning,” suggests Marigold. “You know, since I haven’t read it before?”

If Sadie heard her, she obviously feels this is not a question that requires any response in word or deed.

Marigold tilts her head and leans forward so that she is looking right at the little girl, even if the little girl isn’t looking right at her. “Sadie? Why don’t we open the book?”

When it is clear even to Marigold that Sadie has no more intention of opening the book than she has of reciting the Gettysburg Address, Marigold folds back the cover.

“OK,” she says, pointing to the first word. “Why don’t you start? I’m right here if you have any trouble.”

The first word is “the”. But it isn’t a word that trips lightly off the lips of Sadie Hawkle.

“Come on.” Marigold’s smile shines with encouragement. “You can do it.”

Sadie’s scowl – now aimed at a point several feet in front of their desks – is more like a black hole.

“What’s the ‘th’ sound?” prods Marigold. “Th… th… th…”

Sadie yawns.

“And then when you add an ‘e’ it’s …”

Sadie yawns again.

“… the!” exclaims Marigold. Triumphantly. “The ‘th’ sound with an ‘e’ gives you ‘the’.”

Sadie rubs her eyes.

Is the child a narcoleptic? Is she actually going to fall asleep sitting up?

“OK, now how about the second word?”

Time continues on its painful way.

All around them voices murmur and heads bend over books and notebooks. Faces frown in concentration. Chins rest on fists. Erasers move furiously back and forth. Now and then someone even laughs. But not where Marigold and Sadie sit. Sadie has her arms folded in front of her and Marigold smiles vaguely at the desktop. She asks Sadie if she doesn’t really like the elephant book after all. They could try something else. Or write a story. But if there is one thing you can say about Sadie Hawkle, it’s that she isn’t easily pressured; she doesn’t utter a word.

At last, in desperation, Marigold picks up the book and starts to read it out loud herself. “The elephants lived in an ancient temple, deep in the jungle,” she begins. At the end of each page she asks Sadie a question about the story. Which, needless to say, goes unanswered by Sadie.

It’s not that long a book. When she’s finished, Marigold sets it down in front of the little girl. “Your turn,” she says brightly.

Sadie gives the book a shove that sends it flying to the floor.

Marigold is having a hard time trying to figure out what the bright side of this situation might be, or how to make the best of it.

“You’re picking that up,” she says, but her mouth looks as if it’s saying something else. Something pleasant and possibly full of praise.

Sadie yawns.

At last people start getting to their feet and putting the desks back in rows, and Bonnie charges into the room. “No problems? Everything OK?”

“Yeah, fine,” says Marigold. “But she is very quiet.”

“She’s shy,” says Bonnie. “It’ll take a little while for her to get used to you.”

Marigold lowers her voice, assuming that Sadie isn’t deaf and has heard every word she’s said. “I don’t know, Mrs Kupferberg, I don’t think I’m very good with Sadie. Maybe someone el—”

“There is no one else.” Bonnie Kupferberg, it seems, can also smile with delight while imparting bad news. “You’re my last hope. Everybody else has given up on her. Even the teachers.”

“Oh, but—”

“If you don’t try, she’ll just sit there like she did all last spring till her mother finally shows up to take her home.”

“But I only have to do twenty hours a year,” Marigold explains. “And I—”

“You will come next week, won’t you? Besides everything else, I’ve lost six volunteers since last year.” She runs her hands through her cloud of hair, as though that’s where they might be. “I’m really desperate.”

She looks desperate. Which makes Marigold feel guilty.

It is only twenty hours, Marigold reminds herself; she’s already done more than two. And it’s not like she has to work; all she has to do is sit there. Possibly read a book. She might even read a book she wants to read. And at last Marigold finds a thin but glowing silver lining in this particular cloud: the sooner she puts in her time, the sooner she can stop coming at all.

“Well, I guess I could make it next week.”

It isn’t just her mother that Marigold doesn’t like to disappoint.

When
the bell rings at the end of the school day Georgiana usually is off like a horse at the Kentucky Derby. Today, however, Georgiana lingers as if she’s been at a party that she doesn’t want to end. She double-checks that she’s written down the assignment; she carefully gathers up her books and zips them into her backpack; she rises from her seat only when every other student has left the room. Mr McCrimber finishes erasing the board and looks over, surprised to find her still behind him. Mr McCrimber has taught her before: Georgiana is always the last one to take her seat, and the first one to jump out of it. Maybe she’s not feeling well. Maybe she’s being bullied and is trying to avoid a confrontation.

“Are you all right, Georgiana?” She smiles and says she’s fine. He watches her drift across the room and out the door, to where Claudelia is waiting for her with a bored expression on her face. But when Mr McCrimber leaves himself the two of them are only a few feet from the classroom. Maybe it’s drugs.

Claudelia shuffles along beside Georgiana. “Can’t we go a little faster? I’m getting a cramp in my calf.”

“You go on. You don’t have to stay with me.” Georgiana waves her ahead. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“I got that part,” says Claudelia. “If you went any slower we’d be going backwards. But I thought you start your community service this afternoon. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”

“Why not?” Georgiana would like to be so late she never shows up. “What are they going to do? Fire me?”

Claudelia laughs. “Holy Mother, don’t tell me you’re still moaning about your placement.”

Georgiana looks over at her, her mouth in a knot. “Yes, Claudelia. I am still moaning about my placement. And I intend to continue moaning about it until I’ve put in my twenty hours of penal servitude and don’t have to go any more and can forget about it for the rest of my life.”

“You’re going over the top, as usual,” says Claudelia. “It’s not that big a deal.”

Georgiana, of course, has already had this pointed out to her. More than once; and by more than one person. “That’s what everybody says.”

“Well, everybody’s right. Quit acting like you’re going to your own hanging. You’re just going to sit and talk to some old lady for an hour. There’s nothing hard about that. Pretend she’s your grandmother.”

“You mean already dead?”

Give me strength
, thinks Claudelia. Aloud she says, “You don’t have a grandmother? Not even one?”

Georgiana comes to a complete stop at her locker. “No grandparent of either sex.”

“Not ever?”

Georgiana rolls her eyes. “Um-duh, Claudelia. Obviously my parents didn’t just drop out of the sky. But their parents all passed away before I was born. Except one grandmother.” With the attention of someone defusing a bomb, Georgiana turns the dial on her combination lock. “But I don’t remember her. She died when I was little.”

“OK, but it’s not like you’ve never seen a grandmother. You’ve met other people’s. You’ve met mine. You talked to her all right. You said she was awesome.”

“Claudelia…” Georgiana yanks off the lock. “Your grandmother isn’t a wrinkled old bag who doesn’t know what day it is. She runs her own company and she goes hunting. She is awesome.”

“She’s still my grandmother. And she does have wrinkles. Plus, it’s not a big company and she’s not that good a shot.”

Georgiana takes her jacket from her locker. “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean,” counters Claudelia.

The locker door bangs shut. “Yeah. Be more like Marigold.”

Despite the fact that Georgiana has a better chance of becoming a prima ballerina than a twin-soul to Marigold Liotta, she does try to improve her attitude before she arrives at St Joan’s. It can’t hurt. Georgiana knows that she can both overreact and exaggerate. Even her father, who is very fond of her, has been quoted as saying she could make the Andes out of a pebble. She also knows that if she continues to wind herself up like this her skin will break out.

As she drives, she thinks about what she’s been told. Maybe Will and Claudelia and everybody else she’s complained to about the placement (which is just about everyone she’s seen in the last week, including Mr Malachay at the gas station and some woman who had the misfortune of stopping Georgiana to ask for directions) are right after all and St Joan’s isn’t going to be as bad as she imagined. Maybe there will be young people and middle-aged people and people who are totally healthy except they broke something or had a stroke and have to learn how to walk again. Besides that, it’s not solitary confinement, is it? They don’t lock them in tiny, dark cells and shove a tray of food through the door three times a day. So there probably will be lots of different things to do. Georgiana can’t play the violin, but she can play tennis, dominoes and bridge. She’s also a pretty terrific square-dance caller. And maybe Will is even right about some old people being interesting and cool. It’s not impossible. It’s not just ordinary, boring people who get old – celebrities get old, too. As for the inmates at St Joan’s who are doddering around in that space between life and death, someone with special skills will be taking care of them. They’re not going to be left to the care of a high-school student who doesn’t even iron her own clothes. They won’t be roaming through the corridors on their walking frames either. They’ll be tucked up in their rooms, safe and sound. Which means that, statistically, the chances of Georgiana being present when someone does fall over and/or die are so small as to be non-existent.

Georgiana turns off the main road, slowing down when she sees a large sign that says
ST JOAN’S NURSING CENTRE
.

Nursing
Centre
, thinks Georgiana,
Centre, not Home. So far, so good…

It takes no time at all for her to spot some differences between the centre Will described and what she sees looming at the top of the circular drive. For starters, the grounds don’t look like a private park. There are a few trees the bulldozers missed, a small, defeated lawn and a few hardy shrubs but no sign of gardens, lakes or fountains – and nowhere to put them if there were. Ocean View, where Will’s sister worked, was once the mansion of a wealthy railroad man; St Joan’s was once an elementary school.

As Georgiana approaches the main building, a middle-aged woman and an elderly man come through the door. He has yeti eyebrows and leans on a cane, wobbling noticeably and walking as if he’s paying for each step. The woman has an arm through his, and is talking to him in the sticky-sweet voice some people use with very young children.
He can’t fall, she’s holding on to him
, Georgiana tells herself, and puts on a Marigold Liotta God’s-in-His-heaven-all’s-right-with-the-world smile. The woman ignores her; the old man starts coughing. Georgiana hurries past them; she doesn’t want to see him hit the ground.

It’s a busy afternoon at St Joan’s Nursing Centre. The desk plate says that the receptionist’s name is Alice Einhorn. Alice is on the telephone; another telephone is ringing. From somewhere come the sounds of music (not the violin) and TV voices. It could be someone on the television, but Georgiana thinks she also hears sobbing. A nurse hurries past looking worried. Another rushes by from the opposite direction, talking into a cell phone. White-haired people shuffle along the hall – some in robes and slippers, some dressed as if they have somewhere to go. A woman with a walking frame comes towards her, singing in Italian.

In the blink of time between putting down one phone and picking up another, Alice Einhorn looks questioningly at Georgiana.

Georgiana ups her smile. “I’m Georgiana Shiller? From Shell Harbour High? I’m here to start my community service placement today?”

Alice holds up one hand. “St Joan’s Nursing Centre,” she says in a voice intended to inspire confidence.
Your aged relatives are safe with us
. “How can I help you?” The other phone starts ringing again.

The person Alice is talking to has a lot to say. She covers the receiver and whispers to Georgiana, “Our administrator will see you as soon as he’s free. He likes to induct the volunteers himself, but he’s in a meeting.” She waves her hand. “Why don’t you just wait over there?”

“Sure,” Georgiana whispers back. “Thanks.”

But “over there” is not the waiting area of chairs and a table full of magazines that she expected. “Over there” is a wall. Georgiana props herself against it – under a sign that says
No Cell Phones In This Area
– smiling as if she’s the welcoming committee.

People come and go. Except for the staff in their uniforms and soft-soled shoes, and the visitors in their hats and jackets and looks of somewhere else to be, everyone Georgiana sees is really old. Clapped out. Decrepit. If they walk, they walk slowly. Stooped. Shaking like leaves in a slight wind. Hair from which the years have sucked all colour and skin as wrinkled as a raisin. She can tell from the way they look at her that it’s been a long time since most of them saw a teenager. Can they even remember what a teenager is?