Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (5 page)

“Remember, sustained and silent,” she says and makes a point of getting out her own free reading book.

I've no sooner got
Great Expectations
open and I'm reading about one of Pip's visits to play with Estella when there's a call on the intercom for me to come down to the office. Everyone in class puts their sustained silent reading on hold to watch me for the few seconds it takes to get out of my desk, across the room and into the hallway. Someone hisses loudly, “Admit to nothing!” as I close the door.

A secretary tells me to go into the counselor's office. Mr. Gossling. I saw him when I first came to Stanley Merkin. A one-man welcoming committee for foster kids. Bald head and a goatee and a bolo tie. It's hard to forget those skinny braids slipping through a brass cow's head.

Today he's not looking so welcoming. And he's wearing a real tie with a western sunset on it, a pinkish-orange sun sinking behind a cactus plant.

There are other people at the conference table. Mr. Mussbacher. I give him my Mona Lisa smile. And Shirl. Good heavens, what's she doing here? She's a little redder around the eyes than usual. And puffier.

“Sit down, Tamara,” Mr. Gossling says. “I think you must know why we're here...er...having a meeting today.”

Huh? All I know is when you get a group like this together, it's probably time to play the foster-home
game. Spin the wheel. Which family's up next? Or maybe it'll be a group home this time.

Mr. Gossling opens a folder. It's my personal file with a neat line drawn through the name Schlotter on the tab and replaced with Tierney — the last name of my second foster family. It's the only thing I took with me when I left them two years ago. I can see that, along with other stuff — grade records and official forms — there's all the absence notes I've been writing since I came to Stanley Merkin.

I decide to look down at my hands. One of my projects over the past few months, since coming to stay with Shirl and Herb, has been to get my nails into shape. That can be hard work for someone who's been a nail-biter all her life. It's taken a ton of polish. And wearing band-aids on the tips of my fingers every night for about ten weeks. Of course, Shirl kept accusing Lizzie and Lyle of taking them.

“I'm not surprised you're ashamed, Tamara,” Mr. Mussbacher sighs. “I thought you'd given up all that games-playing. I wouldn't be surprised if the Shadbolts decided to release you. What with this...fraud. And stories about having celiac disease. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

This is where you do have some choices. I could throw a hissy fit. Haven't done that for a while. I'm a little
out of practice. Hissy fits are always great, though, for stirring things up. Shirl looks like she could use a little zap of something.

Or I could cry. Haven't done that for a while, either. That time when Wilma came to see me two families ago. When I was still with the Tierneys. Can you believe I actually begged her to take me back with her? Welfare Wilma. She cried, too, and said it wasn't possible now that she was with Adam and there was the baby, Justin, and another baby on the way and hardly room for the three of them — soon to be four — in their apartment.

Crying can really mess up your eye make-up.

Or I could try the silent treatment. That makes everyone so angry they sometimes forget why you're there in the first place.

But what's really sticking in my mind is Miss Barclay and her diamond brooch. And how she asked if I was coming to the lodge again. I know whatever I do now, I can't do anything to mess up seeing her next week.

That means apologizing. I don't have much practice with that, but how hard can it be?

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“What were you thinking?” asks the sunset tie. “What was more important than school?”

“Nothing,” I mumble. And then I add, “I was... confused.”

That'll light up buttons for both Mussbacher and Gossling. Confused. Social workers and guidance counselors love that word.

“Confused?”

Jackpot. They repeat it at the same time.

“About what's important,” I say. “I didn't really like school when I first got here. But I'm liking it a lot more now.”

“What's caused the change?”

The third degree — and I better not slip up. Don't say anything about modeling. They'd jump all over that, go on forever about learning to walk before you can run and how you need to finish school before you can even think of anything else.

“
Great Expectations
,” I say. “I can't believe how good that book is. Every day we get to talk about what we've read in a literature circle.”

“Weren't you reading it two days ago when you signed my name to this note?” Finally Shirl talks. Tears are beginning to come. “Please excuse Tamara. Her celiac disease has flared up.”

“What is all this nonsense about celiac disease?” Mr. Mussbacher gives me his double-whammy look.

“I thought I had it,” I say. “There was a show on
TV
about it and...well, I thought maybe I had it.”

“She does shy away from anything with flour in it.”
Shirl gives up a search for a Kleenex in her purse and grabs one from a box in the middle of the conference table. Counselors are always ready for criers.

“You want to have a doctor check that out?” says Mr. Gossling.

Oops. Going to doctors. One of my least favorite things to do and I can just imagine what kinds of things they might do to test your digestive system.

“I think it was...” Choose your words carefully, I think. “A false alarm. I guess it was a false alarm.”

“What? You ate a doughnut and discovered it didn't kill you?” Mr. Mussbacher isn't buying it.

I smile at him.

“Mainly I just don't like real starchy food. It's always like...well, like lead in my stomach.”

“Honey, you could've just said,” Shirl sighs. “Heaven knows it wouldn't hurt all of us to cut down, eat more...vegetables.”

It sounds to me like she's having a hard time getting that last word out.

“We may be getting a little off track here,” Mr. Gossling says. “What we're really looking at is Tamara's truancy and, I must say, her rather amazing repertoire of petty subterfuges.”

Now there's a mouthful. We all look at him. Even Mr. Mussbacher.

Mr. Gossling blushes, his forehead and cheeks taking on a bit of the sunset color of his tie.

“Since the Shadbolts are willing to allow Tamara to continue staying with them, I think what we need is an action plan.”

It takes another three quarters of an hour to hammer one out. Shirl has to leave halfway through to get back to her daycare job. I have to agree to all the points in the plan. Mr. Gossling even has the secretary type it up and makes me sign it.

“It's a contract,” he says. “You mess with this and you may not like the consequences.”

I wait until I'm back at the Shadbolts' to read it through and really think about what I've signed.

Personal Action Plan

I agree to the following:

1. I will attend classes faithfully and give each course my best effort.

2. Permission to remain home due to illness must be obtained through Mr. Gossling personally. Failure to do so will result in immediate suspension.

3. I will be proactive in assisting the Shadbolts with household chores, babysitting, etc.

                                                                    
Signed: Tamara Tierney

“Proactive,” Mr. Mussbacher explained, “means don't always wait to be asked to do things to help your foster family. Jump in and offer.”

I go into the kitchen and poke through the cupboards. There's one shelf entirely filled with bags of pasta. Shells and bow-ties and stuff that looks like bird nests. Spaghetti, linguini, macaroni, lasagna noodles. Next shelf down there's pancake mix and Bisquick and packages of stovetop dressing.

Proactively, I put some water in a big pot, add some salt and, when it's boiling, dump in half a package of bow-ties.

What else does Shirl do to get supper on the go? There's half a jar of Cheez Whiz. I scrape that out into a pot and add a can of mushrooms. Sauce for the bow-ties.

And, hey, there's lettuce and tomatoes in the crisper. As I rinse the big wrinkly Romaine leaves, I hold up the last one. It's as wrinkled as the skin on Miss Barclay's hands.

Mr. Mussbacher's always talking about turning over a new leaf.

I turn it over and begin chopping.

Skinnybones in Seattle. In Vancouver. When I wake up, the possibility continues to tease, hovering like a bothersome cat. An amazing amount of determination for someone her age. And I have to admit she does have an arresting presence. Eyes that don't allow you to look away. But she needs shaping, smoothing. Heaven knows she's got more rough edges than a block of firewood.

I phone Byron and ask him to bring my travel diary from the house.

“Reliving some of your trips?” He handles the book with its tapestry cover as if it were something feminine and fragile. “New York. Santa Fe. London. All those concert tours.”

“Yes, dear.” We're in the cafeteria and I try my best not to rush him through his coffee and cinnamon bun.

“Logged a few miles on the Buick. Those trips to Seattle, and didn't you drive to San Francisco once?” He licks the icing from his fingers.

I wait until he's gone to open it. Reread the inscription written on the front page in calligraphy by the art teacher in that last school:

For Jean Barclay on her retirement. The adventure begins...

Then I flip to the back pages. Good. Ricardo's phone number is there. On the blank page just before the addresses and phone numbers, I begin composing a list, and by the time a student nursing-aid has refilled my coffee cup twice, I've got it finished.

1. Get Byron away for two weeks. (A trip to the Philippines?)

2. Does Tamara know how to drive? If not, a crash (!) course. Where? From whom?

3. Tickets to the Ring. Phone Ricardo.

4. Story for Tamara to tell her foster parents (needs to be foolproof!). How often does the social worker check on her?

5. Money for Tamara's course. (Does she need a deposit?)

Number five isn't a problem. One thing Byron doesn't know is how much money I've got tucked away here and there in my bedroom. If my heart had conked out during surgery, I wonder how much of it would have been found, hidden behind photos in my album and under the false bottom of my jewelry box. Inserted into telling chapters of books.

I've written the list but as the day wears on I think more and more about tearing it up. Would they call it kidnapping, whisking a teenager off to another province, another country? Have they ever sent an eighty-nine-year-old woman to jail? Am I way off-base in my reading of Skinnybones? Wishing too hard for her to have the flint and fire of a Rhine goddess? Maybe she's nothing more than a muddled adolescent with a crust of attitude.

It might be absolute craziness to give her that much money. I could hire a nurse or a companion to go with me, wheelchairing me in and out of airports. Could I stand another Gladys?

Even dear Byron might take me, at least as far as the opera house door, but he'd never agree to four days of Wagner. For Byron, there's only one kind of music — the kind blaring from his car radio whenever he takes me out for a drive. Blaring for the few seconds it takes for me to demand he turn it off. Country and
western. God, I hate it. Twanging guitars, sniveling lyrics.

A couple of weeks with Byron might just do me in. That would appeal to him. He'd have the house and the Buick up for sale in forty-five minutes flat.

No. For this last Ring, I see Tamara with me. The great adventures unfold for those willing to think beyond the narrow confines of everyday existence. Tamara, I feel, has that sense of adventure, the single-minded determination of a Marco Polo to seek new lands, a Wagner to seek new music. Spiky little bundle of nerves and energy and fake smiles.

She does come with her class on Friday.

Her hair is blue.

Her smile is wide.

I forgive her inattention for the first few minutes while the
TV
crew is filming. She manages to get herself in front of the camera at least three times in different parts of the lounge.

“The reading room?” she asks, returning to my corner as the cameraman is packing up.

“No, I think the patio if it's not too cold. Mrs. Gollywatchit has her eye on us. If we're inside, I know she'll be checking every five minutes to see if I've lit up. And I must say I do like to puff on a cigarillo during our little chats.”

I've brought my fur jacket with me. There's a slight breeze but not too bad. Tamara helps me get my cigarillo lit.

“Did you know Dickens wrote two endings for
Great Expectations
?” I ask her.

She looks at me questioningly.

“I've been thinking. Perhaps I was hasty...”

“I could work for you. I could —”

“I was thinking of something more like a trade-off.”

“Trade-off?” She's become very still, Skinnybones. Almost as if she's afraid to breathe.

“I had a chance to look at your brochure and what caught my interest was the fact that in August the course is being offered in Vancouver the week after the Ring Cycle operas are staged in Seattle.”

Her eyes are getting bigger. The mascara is heaviest, I notice, along the underlids.

“So here's the deal. I give you the money for your course but we go a week early. We go to Seattle and take in the whole glorious Ring Cycle of operas. For this you will serve as my companion. You will attend the operas with me. Not only will you attend, but you will appear to like them.”