Taking Care of Terrific (3 page)

"No. It's just a bag lady."

"What's a bag lady?"

Boy, did Tom Terrific have a lot to learn. Probably his mother had taught him every nursery rhyme that Mother Goose ever dreamed up, and probably he knew the words to the Apostles' Creed and also the seven warning signals of
cancer. But no one had ever told him about bag ladies.

"Well, first of all," I told him, "they're ladies. You know what ladies are."

"Yep."

"And usually they're kind of old."

"The one who whomped me on the head was old."

"And they're poor," I said.

Tom Terrific thought about that for a moment. "What's 'poor'?" he asked.

What's "poor"? Tough to explain that one to a kid who lives in a huge house on one of Boston's most exclusive streets and whose Teddy bear has a Steiff label.

"They don't have any money, and so sometimes they don't have any place to live, or very much to eat. They walk around the city, and at night they sleep in doorways, or on park benches, or in the subways."

"Not in a bed?" asked Tom, his eyes wide.

"Nope. Not in a bed."

"That's neat."

"Well, it may sound neat," I told him, "but it isn't, really. It isn't any fun to be poor. They carry all their stuff around in shopping bags, or in big pocketbooks."

"Like my bag lady. She had a big pocketbook and she hit me on the head with it."

"Yeah. But she didn't mean to."

We looked down the path and could see Tom Terrific's bag lady shuffling along, her coat flapping. The Public Garden was crowded with all sorts of people; no one paid any attention to her. After a moment she disappeared from sight beyond a horde of roller-skaters.

"Okay, old Tom," I said, putting her out of my mind, "this is our turf, like I said. So we have to get to know it. Let's stake out a spot—how about that bench over there?—and draw some pictures, okay?"

Sure, said Tom Terrific.

I took my art supplies out of my backpack and gave him some pages from a sketch pad and a pencil. I started drawing a tree. A Japanese larch. The trees in the Public Garden have labels on them; that's how I knew it was a Japanese larch.

Tom T. drew squiggles and snowmen. After a few minutes he was bored.

"Look at the Swan Boats," he said, pointing toward the pond.

The pond filled the middle of the Garden, shaped like a big pair of spectacles, with a bridge across the middle where the bridge of the nose
would be. On the bridge, people stood taking pictures, aiming their cameras down toward the water, photographing the famous Boston Swan Boats as they glided by. Each boat had rows of seats for passengers and was operated by a boy who pedaled with his feet as he sat inside a huge swan, molded with outstretched wings and a tall curved neck. The Swan Boats have been there for more than a hundred years. I remember riding in them with my grandmother when I was very small, on Sunday afternoons in the summer. After she died (peacefully, in my bed), I used to think back to those times when she and I rode together in the Swans. All Boston children have memories like that. Or so I thought.

"That's fun, isn't it, riding in the Swan Boats?" I said to Tom Terrific. "It's so quiet, and all the ducks swim alongside."

"I never rode in one," he said wistfully.

"You
didn't?
Why not?"

He looked puzzled by the question. "I don't know," he said finally. "I guess I'm not allowed to."

I didn't say anything. What could I say? We just sat there for a minute, watching the Swans glide silently by.

"Can I go for a walk?" he asked.

I was pretty close to getting the shading right on my Japanese larch, and I didn't want to quit yet.

"Well," I said, "you can go for a little walk. Not out of my sight, because I'm taking care of you. Just down the path, okay? Not near the pond. I'll walk with you after I finish this picture."

"Okay. You forgot something, though."

"What did I forget?"

"You're spozed to tell me not to pick the flowers."

"Oh. Don't pick the flowers. It's against the rules."

"And don't talk to strangers. You're spozed to tell me that," said Tom Terrific.

I groaned. "Don't talk to strangers," I said.

"I'm not going to. I'm going to go count stuff. I can count to a hundred."

And off he went. I kept an eye on his red turtleneck jersey as he wandered down the path. Some roller-skaters made an opening for him and he trotted through—seven of them, in case he was counting roller-skaters. I kept working on my Japanese larch and glanced up from time to time, watching his little red shirt.

It sure doesn't take long to start to love a kid.

Behind me, as I sat working on my drawing of the tree, I suddenly heard the beginning of some music: a few notes sliding up and down into scales, then from the scales into a melody I didn't recognize. It was something you would hum a lot after you'd heard it once or twice: a melody that made you want to dance a long, slow dance cuddled up close to someone you liked a whole lot.

I picked Tom Terrific out of the crowd with my eyes, just to make certain where he was and that he was okay, and then I turned around.

Sitting behind me, on a bench, was a black man, the tallest man I've ever seen if you don't count professional basketball players on TV. His legs were sticking out into the path, crossed at the ankles, wearing jeans, and they were so skinny and long that I thought of a giraffe I'd seen at a zoo once. At one end of the legs was a pair of huge white sneakers, and at the other end was the top of a black man with a small beard and
a big saxophone. His long, thin fingers moved around on the keys, and his shoulders swayed a little as he played. His eyes were closed.

I think it is against the rules to play a saxophone in the Public Garden. He looked like someone who didn't care about that.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the little red shirt, zigzagging back toward me; Tom Terrific plopped himself down on the grass by my feet. I placed the drawing pad on the bench and sat down in the grass beside him. Bearable lay on his back, staring vacantly at the sky.

"Twenty-nine," said Tom T. breathlessly. "Twenty-nine red rosebushes. I didn't count yellow yet."

"Listen," I whispered, and I nodded toward the saxophone player. Tom leaned against me, resting, watching the man's fingers on the keys and listening to the melody. With his hands, Tom began to do a Seiji Ozawa thing, as if he were directing a whole orchestra. I could tell he wasn't doing it to be funny; he did it unconsciously, as if the music had told him to.

The saxophone player, who had opened his eyes, glanced over, saw Tom T. directing him, winked, and kept on playing. Without a pause, he slid from the unfamiliar melody into something I
recognized, though I couldn't think of the words. Tom Terrific could. He began to sing, in a high clear voice.

Hush little baby, don't say a word
Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird...

With one hand stroking his glassy-eyed stuffed bear, old Tom sang it all the way through, verse after verse, his little voice right on pitch, even when the musician took the melody and sent the notes soaring around, up and down, wrong side out, all around the song.

A few people glanced over and raised their eyebrows. Some smiled. Then they went back to their conversations, their newspapers, their naps. But off to the side, suddenly I heard another voice join in: a voice quieter than Tom's, but right on key too, and with the right words, until the pair of voices finished together, softly, at the end:

Hear, oh hear the night bird call;
Soon, oh, soon the dark will fall.

The saxophone player sent the sound swirling in circles into the bright blue air, then tapered it off and let it die. He took the instrument away from his lips and grinned, first at me and Tom
Terrific; then he turned and grinned in the direction of the second voice. I looked. It was the bag lady, the one who had whomped Tom's head.

Her shoes were tied now, but her coat still flapped around her, and her hair still flew from its hairpins in gray strands and wisps. It was she who had been singing the ancient lullaby with Tom. Now she muttered to herself, hefted her purse more firmly onto her shoulder, and began to turn away.

The saxophone player called to her and to Tom Terrific. "Couple of good singers, you two," he said. "We could get us a gig in a club somewhere, hey?"

But the woman wasn't listening; she had turned and was shuffling down the path. Tom Terrific scratched a mosquito bite on his ankle and said shyly, "I know lots of songs."

"Me too," said the tall black man as he began to take the saxophone apart and put it into its case. "You come around here a lot?"

"I'm his babysitter," I explained. "We'll be coming here most afternoons. How about you?"

"Long as she doan rain. Maybe we could make some more music together, whaddaya think, fella?"

"Sure," said Tom T.

The musician snapped his case closed and stood up. Tall, tall, taller. His legs unfolded like umbrella handles. He came over to where we were sitting on the grass and stood beside us, his shadow extending out across the path. "What's your names?" he asked.

"Cynthia," I lied, "and this is Tom. Tom Terrific."

The man leaned down, held out his giant, skinny hand, and shook ours, one after the other. "You can call me Hawk," he said.

"Hi, Hawk," said Tom. "You play good."

"And you sing good." He glanced at my sketch pad. "You don't draw so bad, either, Cynthia. Man, it's hot. I'm gonna get me a Popsicle. You guys want one? And where'd that lady go to?"

We looked around, but the bag lady was gone.

"I have to have Tom home in half an hour," I explained, "and I'm not supposed to let him eat stuff. But a Popsicle sure would taste good. Hey, Tom, if I get you a Popsicle, could you not drip on your shirt so your mom won't know?"

"I won't drip," said Tom Terrific. "I promise."

So Hawk and Tom and I walked over to the man at the Charles Street edge of the Garden, the
man with the Popsicle cart. We all bought green ones. I paid for mine and for Tom's, and he ate it carefully, holding it out in front of him so that the melting ice fell to the path and not down the sleeves of his shirt.

"Gotta split," said Hawk, after he had devoured his Popsicle in two bites and Tom and I were still slurping at ours. "See you guys tomorrow."

"Long as she doan rain," Tom reminded him.

Hawk grinned his wide, slow grin. "Long as she doan rain," he said. He loped off across the Public Garden, carrying his saxophone case.

Tom Terrific and I went for a walk along the path, finishing our Popsicles, before I took him home. It was almost five o'clock. Tom was counting something again. I could hear him murmuring "fourteen, fifteen" between slurps.

The woman in the black coat was sitting on a bench near the Beacon Street side of the Garden as we headed toward the exit there. She was fiddling with her pocketbook and muttering.

"Hi," said Tom Terrific cheerfully to her. "We got Popsicles but I'm not going to tell my mother."

"Root beer," I heard the woman mutter, not looking at us. "They used to have root beer and it
tasted like the root beer my father used to make, but not now, oh no, now they don't have root beer ones anymore, they say nobody wants them, they only have green and orange, but they never asked anybody, really, they just decided that about root beer without consulting anyone, they always do that, decide things without consulting anyone..."

Standing there, finishing our Popsicles, we watched her for a long moment. I didn't have any idea what she was talking about. She wasn't talking to us, anyway. I think she was talking to her pocketbook.

Finally we walked away, through the Garden exit, to go back to Tom's house. Tom kept counting. "Twenty-one, twenty-two," I heard him saying to himself.

"Now, Tom Terrific," I said as we turned onto West Cedar Street, "you'll have to change back to Joshua when you get home."

"I know." He hugged his stuffed bear and plodded along beside me.

"And we broke a few rules. We ate stuff, and we talked to strangers."

"I won't tell," he said firmly, and I believed him.

Just before we reached his house, he said suddenly, "They shouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"What she said. They stopped having root beer Popsicles and they didn't even ask her. It was the kind she liked because it made her think about her daddy."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess so."

He tugged at my hand to make me pay attention. "People
like
to think about their daddies," he pointed out.

I sensed then that there wasn't a Mr. Cameron around, only a Ms. "I know they do," I said, and I squeezed his hand.

"Probably they
all
want root beer Popsicles," he said sadly.

"All
who?
"

Tom Terrific sighed. We were on the steps of his house now, and in a minute he would be Joshua Cameron again. "All the bag ladies," he explained patiently. "There were twenty-four bag ladies in the Garden. I counted them."

Dinner at my house takes many different forms. Sometimes my mother has to work late at the hospital, so Dad and I eat together; he usually reads the
Wall Street Journal,
and I stare out the window while I chew. Every now and then he remembers I am there and looks up and says something like, "What happened at school today?" Then I come up with some incident from History class, or Gym, which he listens to politely. Or else I remind him that it is summer, or spring vacation, or whatever; he nods, says "Of course," and goes back to his paper.

Sometimes Dad has to work late at the office; then Mom and I eat together. She thinks it is the height of rudeness to read at the dinner table. She talks. She asks my opinion about world news, Boston politics, the weather, or any book by Jane Austen. My mother read all of Jane Austen when she was in college; she hasn't had time to read
any books since, only articles about brain tumors.

None of those things interest me. But that doesn't matter, because when I try to give my opinion in response to my mother's questions, she watches me when I talk. Then she says things like: