Touch of the Clown (14 page)

“It'll look a lot better in a few days.”

“Hows Daddy?”

“I won't lie to you. He was pretty torn up. We're going to give him a chance to turn things around. He's agreed to go, for a month, to a treatment center for alcoholics. We tried to convince your grandma to go, too, but she wouldn't have anything to do with it so we'll have to put her into a nursing home for awhile. She's pretty run down, doesn't seem to have been eating properly for a long time. Won't acknowledge she has a drinking problem.”

“Will we ever be back with Daddy?”

“It really depends on him. If the treatment program is successful…” As he talks, he writes things on forms from the folder. “I think he's truly sorry for what he did to you, but that doesn't make it okay, and there's been a lot of neglect. You'll find the Hetheringtons are very kind. They've taken in children before for the department.”

“Do they know about…about Livvy's problem?”

Jim nods. “And, actually, Sophie worked as a registered nurse before she was married, so I think she can handle that. Olivia strikes me as the kind of youngster who has a lot of resilience. I think she'll fit in fine with the Hetheringtons.

“And me?”

Jim looks up from his forms. “You're more guarded,” he says. “But you're used to accommodating people and I think that will help you through…this transition. I hope that, well, that you can quit being an adult for awhile and enjoy the Hetheringtons. They're dying to look after both of you, but that may be hard for you to accept when you've been doing all of the looking after on your own. Give it a try?”

I nod.

“Any questions?”

“There are people…”

“People?”

“Friends. Can I still see them?”

“Well, the Hetheringtons will be your guardians. But I can also act as something of a…liaison. Do you want me to contact them? Then, maybe I can arrange some way for you to
be in touch with them.”

“Yes,” I nod again. “Please.”

I tell him about Cosmo and Nathan, and he scribbles some notes into a little book he carries in his jacket pocket. “I want you to think of me as a friend, too,” he says, leaving me a card with his name and phone number on it. “I spent a couple of years in a foster home when I was a teenager. It wasn't great. They put me in with a family that seemed okay on the outside but was having lots of problems when you closed the kitchen door. So it's important to me that I find good homes for young people in my charge.” He has warm brown eyes and little lines of worry across his forehead. His fingers keep checking just above the worry lines, where there used to be hair.

When he opens the door to the den, Livvy is bouncing up and down, waiting for us.

“Barbara, I made the trains go and they went real fast and I thought there was going to be a crash, but Uncle Hal made it stop just before it happened. Right, Uncle Hal?”

“Righto, kid. You're a demon on that switch. Now let's go and see what damage we can do to that pile of flapjacks and sausages I was telling you about.”

“Oh, goodee.” Livvy flashes her dimples.

I know what Jim Beresford means.

It's only been a few days since I saw Jim Beresford, but I wish he would call. Is Cosmo out of the hospital yet? Nathan would know. I've tried phoning him twice but each time I get his mother. “You gotta be kidding. I'm the last person to know where he is,” she says the second time I phone. “I'm just his mother.”

It's hard to find a time when Auntie Sophie isn't watching me and I can get hold of the phone for a few minutes. How long does it take for a hospital to fix pneumonia? Maybe Cosmo is already at home resting. One of the times Livvy and I went over to Cosmo's apartment, I peeked in his bedroom as we headed back from the bathroom. His bed was filled with gigantic cushions covered in embroidery and patch-work–even, it seemed, bits of silver and gold and tiny odd-shaped mirrors. A bed out of
The Arabian Nights.
Maybe he's there now, on that ocean of cushions, sleeping, or reading, or listening to the lady with the sad, scrapy voice singing.
God Bless the Child.

“Barbara.” Livvy is calling me. I wonder if
she's had an accident. And then I remember she doesn't call me for that anymore. Not since Auntie Sophie's been looking after her.

I go to the bottom of the basement stairs. “What?”

“Guess what I'm doing?”

“Pretending you're a sweet little girl?”

“No. Guess.”

“Don't know.”

“Come up.”

I climb the stairs but my legs feel so tired I can hardly do it.

“Making muffins.” Livvy cackles. “Muffins. Muffins.”

“Your face looks so much better today, Barbara.” Auntie Sophie stops spooning muffin batter into a couple of pans she has waiting on the counter. Livvy is on a stool beside her, licking her fingers, chanting a song she has made up with lots of yummy-yummies in it.

I know what my face looks like. It still looks like I got hit by a truck. One eye is pretty well swollen shut. It's green and purple and blue all at once.

“I'm helping Auntie Sophie,” Livvy chirps.

“She's such a dear.” Auntie Sophie has a jar of
Smarties which she's shaking onto the top of the muffins. Livvy's hand darts out and she catches some. She giggles like a demented Munchkin.

“And I think we're just going to get on top of her health problems in no time. What this little girl needs is a good diet, and routine, and proper rest. When I think of what she's been through. Well.” Auntie Sophie holds the Smarties jar in the air as if it were a weapon she'd like to use against Daddy and Grandma. Maybe me. “I suspect she got her kidney infection in the first place because of a lack of sanitation. Likely she was run-down. That's when nephritis strikes, when you're run-down, and those itty-bitty germs are just waiting to pounce…”

Keep talking, Auntie Sophie, I think. You know it all. When I close my eyes, I see the laundry sink in the basement with Livvy's clothes and bedding soaking. I smell the bleach. I think of the thousands of times I've helped her clean up and change.

“But all that's going to be different now, isn't it, lamb? Auntie Sophie's not going to let any of those nasty germs near…”

I try to block out the sound of the woman's words buzzing around the kitchen like a bunch
of dizzy flies. I wish I had my word search but it's downstairs in the survival bag.

“And all that alcohol and smoke. Gracious heavens, I shudder to think what you've been through.” Auntie Sophie is slipping the muffin pans into the oven and Livvy is licking the mixing bowl with big slurping noises, smacking her lips and burping.

“Quit acting dumb,” I say to her, and she gives her tongue a rest from licking the bowl long enough to stick it out at me. Auntie Sophie almost catches her but Livvy gives her a sugary Shirley Temple smile.

“You were probably both born with fetal alcohol syndrome,” Auntie Sophie says, closing the oven door and taking the mixing bowl from Livvy.

I know about fetal alcohol syndrome. The man from the alcohol and drug abuse center told us all about it in one of Ms. Billings' health classes. Expectant mothers who drink, giving birth to alcoholic babies.

Stop talking, I try to say, but Auntie Sophie's voice goes on and on, like the churning of the dishwasher. You don't know anything about Mama, so just shut up.

“It can lead to all kinds of psychological and physical problems.” Her voice won't stop. Livvy has hopped down and is trying to see into the oven. “Hyper-activity, lack of attention…”

I feel each word pounding into me. My chair crashes to the floor and suddenly I'm running downstairs. I slam the bedroom door and turn the lock.

Someone is screaming. Someone is knocking Luanne's glass collection all over the room.

The someone is me.

It only lasts a minute and then I am on the floor, searching for the bits of glass. There is the head of the zebra. There is the glass whale. It's not broken at all.

A hand is banging on the door.

“Barbara!” Aunt Sophie shrieks. “Open this door! Open this door right away!”

Close to the ruffle on the bedspread, I can see a piece of the glass monkey. I crawl over and add it to the little pile.

“Baarbraa,” Livvy is wailing.

I get up and unlock the door.

“Barbara, whatever's the matter?” Auntie Sophie nearly falls into the room. She gives her chest some little pats as if she's trying to get
something that's stopped going again. Then she sees the pile of Luanne's glass pieces. She gasps and holds tight to the top of her dress. I watch as her mouth opens and closes like a goldfish that's flopped out of its bowl.

“Barbara.” It is Livvy who finally speaks, choking my name out of the end of one of her sobs. “I want Daddy. I want to go home.”

“I'm sorry.” I'm not sure if Auntie Sophie hears me. “I'll buy some new ones for Luanne.”

“I want to go home.”

“Hush, sweetie.” Auntie Sophie quits sputtering and pulls Livvy to her. “That was a very…hurtful thing to do.” She looks at me in a way that makes me feel about the size of one of Luanne's glass animals. “She collected those for years.”

“I'm sorry. I'll…”

“They can't be replaced.”

Livvy spies the glass elephant over by the window and runs to pick it up.

“That's a good girl.” Auntie Sophie's voice sounds like it might begin crying in a minute. “You help Barbara pick these up. I want to talk to Harold about this.”

I'd better start packing. Not that I have much
with me to pack. Livvy has made a pile of glass fragments on the corner of Luanne's desk, and then she creeps out of the room and I hear her go upstairs.

Uncle Hal, when he comes down later, doesn't tell me to get my things together. He looks at the pile of glass pieces and picks a couple of them up.

“It's funny what people collect,” he says. “Me and my trains. That was something I wanted to do when I was twelve but I never started doing anything about it until about ten years ago when the girls left home. Now, Luanne, I don't think she ever cared much about this collection. It was more her mother's idea. She got one little glass animal for her birthday one year. And then Sophie got it into her mind that Luanne was collecting them. After awhile, I think Luanne started believing it, too. But if it was something really dear to her, I think she would have taken it with her.”

“I'm sorry,” I mumble. “I didn't mean to smash them.”

“Sophie said some things, didn't she?”

I look down at the carpet. There's a piece of glass we've missed, half hidden behind a leg of the wicker chair.

“Sometimes she doesn't think how things might sound.” Uncle Hal's voice is very soft. “Now, let's just forget about this. It's over, and Sophie's feeling sorry, too. I'll ask Luanne if she'd like us to get new ones for her and, if she does, we'll work something out.”

I don't start crying until Uncle Hal leaves the room. I hide my face in Luanne's flowery bedspread. When I look up, I see Livvy has crept back into the room.

“What do you want?”

“I'm sorry.” Livvy's face crumples. “I won't lick the dish out noisy again.”

“It's okay. I'm not mad at you. I just want to be alone for awhile. I've got a headache.”

“When it's finished, will you read to me?”

“Sure,” I say. I'm a better reader than Auntie Sophie. She gets half the names wrong in
Winnie-the-Pooh.

On the weekend, the Hetheringtons pack a picnic and take Livvy and me out to Alberta Beach for the day.

“I want you to tell me what you'd like to do, Barbara,” Auntie Sophie had urged, watching as I finished a chapter of
Jane Eyre,
putting it down
for a minute and stretching. “We've been doing all kinds of things for Livvy, you know, taking her out for pizza and to the park, and renting movies, but we haven't really done anything special just for you.”

I think she and Uncle Hal have had a talk about me.

“I'm fine. I don't really feel like doing any-thing.”

“Your face is looking ninety percent better. You could go out now and nobody would notice anything, I'm sure. You think of something you'd like to do this weekend. Your choice.” Auntie Sophie can't be turned off once she's got an idea in her mind, so I told her about being at the beach with Mama, and how much I loved it. Almost wiggling with pleasure, she called Uncle Hal up from his trains and they worked out the details.

“Goodee, goodee. A picnic.” Livvy bounces into the car, acting as if the whole thing is her idea.

“What have you got in the bag, honey?” Auntie Sophie asks me.

“Oh, just the stuff I always take with me.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh?” Livvy
asks.

“Of course.”

“Read me some on the way out. I like the part about Piglet where he is entirely surrounded by water.”

“Did you hear that, Harold?” Aunt Sophie says. “Livvy my love, you are developing an amazing vocabulary.”

Astounding–she can remember a chapter heading, I think.

When we get there, the Hetheringtons find a picnic table close to the beach.

I want to find the spot where Mama and I used to spread our beach towels. “You want to do some word searches?” I ask Livvy.

“No. Uncle Hal and I are going to get double-dipped ice-cream cones.”

“Well, whoop-dee-do,” I say, but not loud enough for anyone to hear.

It takes a little while but I'm pretty sure I find our spot. I lie on the big striped towel Auntie Sophie has given me. I have sunscreen and word searches. Auntie Sophie refused to make dillpickle sandwiches. She has her own ideas of a picnic lunch. Hot dogs with home-made relishes, simmered onions in a little thermos, enough potato salad to feed the town of Alberta Beach.