Flood (14 page)

The air seemed charged with electrical energy. The garbage can rolled about noisily on the sidewalk. Then the wind disappeared as suddenly as it had come and the garbage can was still.

Aunt Mona said quickly, “We'll walk. It's not far.” They started walking. Aunt Mona raised the damaged umbrella above their heads. She said, “Are you all right?”

Andy didn't answer her.

“This is all for the best, you'll see,” said Aunt Mona. They walked together in silence, Andy trembling in a fever of despair, walking like a robot for what seemed like ten miles under the umbrella through the rain along one poor street and down another to a narrow street of dismal houses. There was a number on Aunt Mona's front door, but to Andy everything was a blur. Aunt Mona opened the door with a key and they went inside.

HE SLEPT WARMLY through the last few days of November and the first light snow of the year. The room smelled faintly of roses and he was reminded of his mother. Shadowy figures shuffled in and out, bringing water he couldn't swallow without it spilling and pills that stuck in his throat. He was in the hospital again, with nurses coming and going and Father Coughlan murmuring at him about being strong and keeping his faith, but after a while he realized there were only two people, a man and a woman, whispering in drowsy murmurs over him in the language of bees.

He woke in the night and the voices were not there. The room was dark. He tried getting out of the bed, but was too weak, and his head fell back on the pillow. He lay awake, eyes open in the dark. Again, he tried to sit up and swing his legs out from under the covers, but fell back into sleep instead and dreamed about his mother.
Another day. He half woke in the warm room, voices whispering.

He dreamed he was in Tir Na n'Og under a cloudless blue sky in a blue and yellow field — bluebells and buttercups. White horses grazed nearby. His mother was calling him from their tree house, telling him something he couldn't quite hear. Vinny came out of the house, looking like Tarzan. He stood behind Judith, she now in her Jane outfit. Andy started running toward them, but Tarzan lifted Jane with one arm and leaped up to a thick hanging vine, and the two figures swung away into the jungle without him.

He woke and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. The room was dim and quiet. He was alone.

His mother was gone.

And his father didn't want him.

He closed his eyes and sank again into darkness.

Someone sitting near the bed, head bent: a man writing in a newspaper, working on a crossword puzzle. Andy closed his eyes and listened to the man quietly whispering words to his pencil. Then he slept again.

He tried to sit up to take some soup from one of the whisperers, who turned out to be Aunt Mona. When he saw who it was, he said, “I don't want any,” and pushed the spoon away.

“Eat. It's good for you.”

“I don't care.”

The second whisperer was the crossword puzzle man. He tiptoed into the room one daylight time and said something Andy did not understand. Andy stared at him, and soon he went away, closing the door quietly behind him.

Another time. Aunt Mona brought food on a tray and sat on the edge of the bed urging him to eat, but he turned his head away and closed his eyes until he heard her leave the room, and then he saw the food left on the tray and ate a little of it, not noticing what it was he was eating. Then he slept again.

The man came in and stood beside the bed.

Andy didn't look at him.

“Hello, Andy. I'm Hugh Hogan.”

Andy looked at him. The crossword puzzle man. He was short and barrel-chested, with a shy smile and bristly gray hair like a brush.

“How're you feeling?”

“What's the matter with me?”

“You had the fever.”

The fever. He felt empty.

“Mona asked me to look in on you. Are you warm enough?”

He sank back on heaped pillows, closing his eyes. The man left, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. The bed was warm and soft. He slept again.

He woke when Aunt Mona came in with a pink hot-water bottle and tray of food. She put the tray down on the
floor and reached under the bedcovers and pulled out another hot-water bottle, this one blue, and held up the pink one for Andy to see. “Do you need another?”

He had never used a hot-water bottle before. “No.”

Aunt Mona left it aside and picked up the tray. There was a boiled egg with buttered toast. She placed the tray in front of Andy and perched on the edge of the bed like a bird to watch him eat. He was hungry. He ate.

“That's the first bit of solid food you've got down you in four days,” said Aunt Mona. “You're thin as a twig.” She saw him glancing around the room. “This is your room now. Your things are in the wardrobe. And extra blankets if you need them. Don't get up until you're ready. You've all the time in the world.” She took the tray when Andy was finished, and stood. “I'll bring you up some milk.”

When his aunt had gone back downstairs with the tray and the blue hot-water bottle, he slipped out of bed on wobbly legs, grabbed the pink hot-water bottle, and took it into bed with him and slipped it under his thighs. It was too hot, so he slid it down toward the bottom of the bed near his feet. After a while he got up again and walked shakily to the window and looked out. Snow, everything covered thinly in snow. It was early morning, he could tell by the hazy brightness of the sky over the roofs of the houses. He was looking down on a small backyard. The neighbors on either side had identical yards, separated by snow-topped fences, and across the cobbled alleyway were duplicate yards repeated monotonously along the row of houses. Most, including Aunt Mona's, had lines hung with
washing that fluttered fitfully in the wind. There was a cold draft. He looked up; the top part of the window was open. He reached up and pushed it closed.

He turned and looked about him. He had the small room to himself, upstairs at the back of the house. The room was warm, but he shivered and wrapped his arms about himself. The floor was wood and the wallpaper was an ugly lemon color with a sucky white butterflies-and-daisies design. The bed had a thick mattress, white sheets, creamy blankets, an old faded lemon candle wick bedspread, and several heavy, plump pillows in white cotton pillowcases. The room's furniture included a plain varnished chair; a small, ugly chest of drawers, varnished, with a fussy white lace runner, an old-fashioned alarm clock, and a calendar on it; a tall and ugly wooden closet — what his aunt had called the wardrobe — with an oval mirror on its door set in a wood frame; a framed picture hanging on the wall near the door of Jesus pointing to His bleeding heart; and a red throw rug on the wood floor between the bed and the chest. The time on the alarm clock was twenty after six. Beside the bed was a small table. There were no bookshelves in the room, no radio. Everything was clean, polished. A light with a frosted glass shade on it dangled from the ceiling center. It was the only light in the room. The switch was next to the bleeding-heart picture. He hated the bleeding-heart picture and hated the room.

He remembered Vinny's words: “I'll find the right place for us. Leave it to me.”

His father wanted him. Of course his father wanted him. He had promised to find a place for them both. He had promised to send for him.

Vinny
did
want him; he had to believe that.

He looked around the room; it would do as a temporary solution, until his father sent for him. Or until his mother came for him.

He discovered himself in the mirror. Pale puffy face. Eyes black like… raisins. He was wearing cotton pajamas, obviously new; he couldn't remember putting them on. He opened the closet doors and saw his parka on a hanger, and his jeans. There were drawers in the lower part of the closet, all empty. The top of the drawers formed a shelf, upon which were two folded blankets. He found his shirts, pants, socks, a second pair of pajamas in the chest of drawers, everything clean and folded. The floor was cold on his bare feet, so he rolled back into the warm bed and sat with his feet on the hot-water bottle and the covers pulled up to his chin. He studied the cracks on the ceiling. Could his mother see him now?

He remembered leaving the Mayo Rooms with Aunt Mona, remembered Vinny's face, like the face of the suffering Jesus over on the wall. Andy slid out of bed quickly, lifted the bleeding-heart picture down off the wall, and laid it facedown in the bottom drawer of the chest. Then he got back into bed again, closed his eyes, and slept.

When he woke, the room was dark except for silver moonbeams angling through the window. He saw the Sheehogue sitting on the windowsill in the bright moonlight,
four of them, kicking their legs up in the air and laughing and arguing in Little People language. They wore tiny Moosehead hockey shirts, and their hair grew straight on their tiny heads like unmown grass.

One of them noticed him watching and waved. “Hello, Andy.”

“Hello, Andy!” they all called to him.

He tried to wave back but couldn't lift his arm. Then he saw a fifth, an old white-bearded one in a plain green collarless shirt, lying at the foot of his bed, bathed in moonlight, sleeping with his mouth wide open, cuddled up against the pink hot-water bottle. Andy tried to keep his eyes open so he could continue to watch them, but he fell asleep.

When next he woke, it was still dark outside but the room light was on. The windowsill and bed were empty of Little People. Like Tarzan and Jane, it had been just another dream.

Aunt Mona came in, after knocking, with food on a tray. She set the tray on the side table. “I've brought you some soup.”

“I don't like soup.”

“Good food means good health. You must eat to keep up your strength.” She moved the chair closer to the bed and sat facing Andy, waiting for him to help himself to the food, but he ignored the tray, glaring at her. The thing he always noticed first about his aunt was her eyes, bright, dark, penetrating, as if she could see into him and read his thoughts. She wore a long blue skirt, cream blouse, and
dark blue cardigan. She smelled of rose water. She looked and smelled different without the mothballed gray armor of her coat, serious and stern as usual, but softer somehow, more natural and relaxed, shoulders and neck not so stiff, younger perhaps, for though cut severely, her thick black hair showed only a few strands of gray, and the pinched gray face that Andy remembered from the taxi as they rode to the airport now appeared pinkly normal, so that she didn't seem any older than his mother.

Aunt Mona said, “It's stuffy in here.” She noticed the closed window. “Fresh air is food for the lungs.” She got up, opened the window, and then sat again. “Would you like another hot-water — “

“I don't want to stay here. My father will take care of me as soon as he's better.”

“Your father! Hmmph! That man can't even take care of himself. You'll be looked after properly here, I promise you. Good plain food, and a bath every day whether you think you need it or not. Merciful heaven! I thought it was a chimney sweep I was looking at when I came for you on Friday. Your hair was black with filth and you smelled so bad it made my eyes smart. There's no excuse for dirt. You couldn't have been dirtier if you'd come straight from a factory chimney. And thin? Like a darning needle! You must have eaten nothing all the time you were there. It's no wonder you were sick.”

Andy glared at her.

“Your father hasn't the faintest idea of how to bring up a child. And even if he did, he wouldn't have the time;
he's too fond of his friends and his gambling and his drink.”

“You're always saying horrible lies about my father! He's a good man and he wants me! And I don't need anyone to bring me up; I'm eleven and I can bring myself up.” Andy glared defiantly at his aunt.

“I've no wish to fight with you, boy, but I'm a plainspoken woman, inclined to be abrupt — some might say blunt. Eat the soup I brought you. You need building up.” She stood and took a blanket from the closet. “The heat doesn't seem to get up to this room much. I'll throw an extra blanket over the bed.”

“I don't need it. And I don't need your soup.”

She dropped the blanket onto the chair. “It'll be there should you want it.” She marched to the door. “And you might change your mind about the soup. By the way, your Aunt Jill and Uncle Joe are coming to dinner on Sunday. Jill is Hugh's sister, so she isn't really your aunt, not a blood relative, I mean. Nor is Joe really your uncle. But you're family; they think of you as a nephew: they're looking forward to meeting Judith's boy.”

“Did my father phone to see how…”

She hesitated. Then, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Aunt Mona's voice softened. “Yes, I'm sure.” She thought for a second. “Probably can't get to a phone because of his crutches.”

As soon as his aunt had left, Andy spread the blanket on the bed and tried the soup. It seemed okay; he was hungry,
so finished it off, then stared at the empty bowl. His mother was gone. I'm Vinnys boy now, not Judith's, Vinny's. Poor old Vinny, limping along on crutches. He would go see how his father was, as soon as he felt okay again. If his aunt tried to stop him, he'd go anyway.