Criss Cross (16 page)

“Would you, though?” asked Hector.

“No,” said Debbie. “But I would eat some if it’s the kind that has those little mandarin oranges in it.”

“It’s not,” said Hector. “It has grated carrots in it. And celery.”

“Oh. Then I wouldn’t eat some, I don’t think.”

A few honking guffaws came from Lenny and Phil. They were still talking about their movie. Or something.

“So,” said Hector, “have you had any interesting dreams lately?”

Debbie looked at him.

“I don’t think I would tell you even if I did,” she said.

P
eter Bruning woke up and he didn’t know where he was. He was in a strange bed, in a strange room. A strange-looking branch snaked by outside the window, maybe attached to whatever tree was filling the room with dim green humid light, or maybe not.

Somewhere not too far away, a vacuum cleaner whined and droned. The sound of it rose and sank as it turned corners, dove down under furniture and pulled back out, clattered from carpet onto the wood floor. Then it stopped. The room was now familiar, and Peter remembered that he was in his grandmother’s house. Grosi’s house. For
Grossmutter.
There was his suitcase on the floor, unlatched, airline tags sprouting from the handle.

He remembered now that he and his parents had stopped here last night on their way from the airport to his aunt and uncle’s house, where they stayed during their visits. They never stayed at Grosi’s. There were various reasons for this, but the main one was that she drove Peter’s father, who was her son, nuts. It was a mutual feeling. He drove her nuts, too. Peter’s mother’s theory was that they were too much alike. They were both alpha males. That was her joke.

Grosi had made dinner for them, roast beef and potatoes with gravy. Carrots and cabbage. Corn pudding with heavy cream. Lettuce with hot bacon and bacon grease on it. Tapioca with canned peaches in syrup.

After dinner, as Peter’s parents tried to cancel out the heaviness of the meal by taking their coffee black, they brought up the topic they had been talking about with each other, and over the phone with the aunts and uncles, in the preceding weeks. The topic of how Grosi might want to move into an apartment. Where everything was all on one floor. She wouldn’t have to climb steps and it wouldn’t be so much work to take care of. It would be so much easier for her, with her arthritis and everything else.

There was that Senior Citizens Tower they were putting up in Birdvale, what about that? It looked really nice, and it was so close to everything. The grocery store, the post office. A bank. She wouldn’t even have to drive.

As they talked, Peter watched his grandmother, and he could see that his grandmother would rather drop dead. She sat like a stone, her hands folded in her lap. A ruse to conceal the fact that she could no longer completely unfold them.

“I’m fine here,” she said. “I have someone coming to help me with things. A girl. She comes once a week.”

“A girl can’t do everything that needs to be done around here, Mother,” said Peter’s father. “What about your windows? If you don’t get paint on them, they’re going to rot. There are three years of leaves in your gutters; they’re about to fall off the house. And you need a new roof. A girl coming once a week can’t do all of that.”

“I could,” said Peter. “I mean, I bet I could do some of it. A lot of it. Maybe not the roof.”

He hadn’t planned to say it. It just came out.

His mother ignored him.

“And what if you fall,” she said. “What about your sugar, and your heart?”

Grosi ignored her. She turned to Peter.

“Why don’t you stay here with me for a few days?” she said. “Can you do that? You can do a few little jobs for me, then tell everyone how fine I am.”

She was asking him for help. She needed an ally. She needed her house. If you put her in an anonymous little apartment somewhere, she might disappear. Evaporate. Peter couldn’t believe his parents were even suggesting it.

“Okay, Grosi,” he said. “I can stay here all week.”

He felt he was honoring an ancient, unspoken pact.

His father raised his eyebrows. His mother just looked at him. When they left for the evening, Peter followed them out to get his bag from the car.

“It’s just postponing the inevitable,” he heard his father say.

“Let him spend a week here,” said his mother. “Then he’ll see.”

That’s why he was here. He reached for his glasses and looked around the room for a clock. He didn’t feel quite as noble as he had last night. He would be here for one week, and he didn’t really know what he would be able to do. He hadn’t had much experience at being useful.

Mrs. Bruning had trouble falling asleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with her son and the California wife. Three times she turned on the bedside lamp and read, trying to put it out of her thoughts so she could drift off. Twice she tried the
Reader’s Digest.
Usually she found it very useful as a sleeping aid. The first time she went through and read all of the funny stories. The second time she read quite a bit of the condensed novel at the end. It was a humorous one, which she liked better than the heartwarming or inspirational ones.

Both times she thought she had banished the conversation to the depths where it belonged, but each time it crept back in, hiding inside some innocent thought and then jumping out at her, like soldiers from their Trojan horse.

She worked her way up once more to a sitting position and turned on the light. She put on her thick glasses and sat there, for a moment, looking around the room. She liked it, even in the semidarkness. Especially in the semidarkness. Dim lighting was better for old things. For old furniture and old people. For people as old as me, she thought, pitch black is probably best. She had a silent laugh at her little joke.

She didn’t like new buildings. They didn’t feel right to her. They didn’t smell right or sound right. And she didn’t want to have to go on an elevator every time she went in or out. Why should she be stranded in some claustrophobic white box up on the umpteenth floor, surrounded by senile nincompoops? She wasn’t going to do it.

This Peter, this grandson she had barely recognized when he walked in the door, wanted to help her. She didn’t know what he was capable of, but he was on her side. And the Debbie girl was coming tomorrow. She liked Debbie. The girl had a spark. She kept it under a bushel most of the time, but Louise Bruning could spot it. She would like to fan the little spark. She thought it would be a good idea to set the bushel on fire and burn it right up. The world had enough sheep in it already.

The three of them would get the house back in shape, she decided. She knew she had let things go, and they couldn’t do it all, but they could show her children that she could still manage.

Having a plan made her feel better. She reached for the
Readers Digest
again, then decided against it. Instead she picked up a book someone had given her that, from what she could gather, was about a seagull who was some kind of a deep thinker. It worked even better than the
Reader’s Digest.
She didn’t finish two pages before her eyes closed. Soft, warm sleep welcomed her in at last. Dawn was only a couple of hours away, and it wasn’t going to be enough, but she would have to take what she could get.

When Peter came down, barefoot, into his grandmother’s kitchen, the bottom half of a girl was sticking out from under the kitchen sink. He was pretty sure it was a girl. He blinked, then yawned. They were girl legs, and girl tennis shoes. She was doing something under there. As he waited for this to make sense, the rest of the girl worked her way out and stood up. She had a tool in one hand, some weird type of wrench, and when she saw Peter she froze, like a startled bunny. He couldn’t help smiling.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m—this is my grandmother’s house. I’m Peter. Or Pete. Peter.”

She said, “Oh.” Then she said, “Hi.”

She looked uncertain. Maybe she couldn’t decide what her name was, either. The startled bunny expression had given way to a blush.

“You must be ‘The Debbie Girl,'” he said.

She nodded and said, “Uh-huh.”

“Grosi told me you were coming,” he said. “What is that thing, anyway? What were you doing under there?”

“It’s a basin wrench,” said Debbie. “The faucet was dripping.”

She was glad to have something specific to say.

“Wow,” said Peter. “You know how to fix that?”

“I think so,” she said. “I helped my dad do it once.” She was still blushing. She was a blusher. A shy blusher. Peter decided to keep asking her questions.

“Where’s my grandmother?” he asked. “Is she awake yet?”

“No,” said Debbie. “I’m kind of surprised. She usually is, by this time.”

“Oh, good,” he said. “That means I can eat breakfast before she puts me to work.”

He started poking around in the cupboards. He opened the refrigerator and stood there with the door open. Debbie had returned to her plumbing job. She was turning the faucet on and off and watching it.

“I could have toast with jam,” he said. “If I could find some bread. Or I could have cereal, if I could find some milk.”

He hadn’t considered the possibility that he might starve here. Where, oh where, were the foods of yesteryear? Or even last night? The cupboard was bare. He saw a small bowl of chilled mashed potatoes from last night’s dinner and another that held what was left of the cooked cabbage. There was a cluster of bottles that he supposed were medicine of some kind. He wondered how cereal would taste with Cremora. If he added some water, maybe.

“Where does she hide the food?” he asked.

“There isn’t a lot,” said Debbie. “I don’t think she eats very much. She eats a lot of jelly sandwiches.”

“That sounds good,” said Peter hopefully. It didn’t sound good long term, but it would do for right now. “Where’s the bread?”

Debbie produced it from a metal box on the counter, and Peter discovered that a ceramic pitcher in the refrigerator had orange juice in it. He made three jelly sandwiches. It being ten o’clock. More like brunch time. He was just tucking into his meal when his grandmother entered the room.

She moved slowly and unsteadily, and she seemed unsettled to find people in her kitchen. She looked from one of them to the other and back, as if she were trying to figure something out.

“Morning, Grosi,” said Peter pleasantly. He added, “Hot enough for you?” because he noticed that she was perspiring. Her face was shiny with moisture. It didn’t feel all that hot to him, but it was probably something, another thing, about being old. Hot weather was probably harder to take.

His grandmother looked at him, or through him, and muttered something. She sounded angry. It almost sounded like she was cursing at him, though he couldn’t be sure because her speech was unclear. And she was speaking in German. He recognized
Dummkopf.
He stopped chewing, puzzled, and saw as she turned away from him that she was going to lose her balance. She might have fallen to the floor, but Debbie and Peter rushed to her, one from each side, and helped her into a chair. The skin of her arms felt damp and clammy.

Their eyes met over her head.

Peter’s eyes asked, What is happening?

Debbie’s eyes said, I don’t know. Something weird.

Peter sat down next to his grandmother.

“Are you feeling okay, Grosi?” he asked.

She didn’t answer at first, then she mumbled a few words, but again in German. To Peter’s surprise, Debbie responded to her, also in German. She seemed to be asking his grandmother questions. When Grosi tried to answer, her voice was weak and upset.

Peter felt helpless. He couldn’t tell if what was happening was a big or a small thing. He looked at Grosi and at Debbie, searching for a clue. Debbie appeared to be thinking. Which she was. She was thinking about a recent episode of
Like Ships in the Night.
Also about the small bottles of insulin inside the door of Mrs. Bruning’s refrigerator.

Mrs. Bruning was diabetic. So was Ridge’s father, Cliff, on
Like Ships in the Night.
Debbie didn’t have the first idea of whether or how to administer insulin, but when Cliff had exhibited these same symptoms on the show, Ridge had saved Cliff’s life by dumping some sugar into a glass of orange juice and making him drink it. Cliff had missed eating his breakfast, just like Mrs. Bruning had. That’s what Debbie had been asking her. “Did you have any breakfast?” To which Mrs. Bruning had responded, “I keep telling you, I’m not hungry. Nincompoop.”

Debbie didn’t know if the sugar in the orange juice was a real thing to do, or something made up for TV. She didn’t think they could show it on television if it were completely made up.

Peter watched her as she took the lid from the sugar bowl, poured sugar into his orange juice, and fed it to his grandmother, saying more German words. Explaining something. In moments Grosi had revived somewhat. Immediately she started to insist that she was fine. She seemed more herself, but she didn’t look fine.

Debbie told his grandmother she was going to use the phone. In English, then German. Debbie went to the phone and put the receiver to her ear. She listened, she jiggled the silver hook, and listened again. She picked up an envelope from the counter and looked at it. Through the glassine window, she could see today’s date, and a notice in red letters. Mrs. Bruning hadn’t paid her phone bill. The line was dead.

The neighbors weren’t at home. The neighbors’ neighbors weren’t at home, either. The street was deserted. It would have been a great day for breaking and entering, thought Peter. He ran from house to house, banging on doors, shouting hello, peering through windows, going around from the fronts to the backs. He began trying the doors to see if they were unlocked, thinking he could go in and use the phone. He was surprised at how locked they all were. Where was small town America when you needed it?

Debbie moved between Mrs. Bruning and the back door, the door Peter had gone through, running, to get help. What was taking him so long?