Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders (9 page)

When I grilled Tilton about the event, she said she’d confused eating the mongrel king’s heart with her desire for a father. How?

One thing was clear. If George hadn’t run off with Marie Cultry, Tilton wouldn’t have been confused and wouldn’t have eaten a mongrel king’s heart. Further, if George hadn’t run off, I wouldn’t have returned to my childhood home with my crazy mother. If she’d had a mother and father in a sweet small town like Newark, Delaware—ivy growing on doorways, a quaint Main Street, and a hallowed college campus—Tilton might have been more normal. Ruthie wouldn’t have run off either. Without George’s awful example, Ruthie wouldn’t have known how.

Or maybe it was the lightning. If it hadn’t struck the plane that night and sent a hunk of burning engine to the road and hadn’t killed Marie Cultry’s brand-new husband, then George and I might have survived the aggression of daily living. We may have even sweetened on each other—returning to our courtship—once the kids were older.

But why revisit that suffering?

The phone rings. I forgot that there was a phone even though I spoke to Mrs. Gottleib on it a short while ago. People shouldn’t be able to reach you when you’re in a hospital. It’s like having a telephone in the bathroom. Indecent.

Somehow I know it’s Ruthie calling. I know it the way I know the most basic things—a toothache, a thunderstorm.

“Mom, are you okay?” I hear when I answer. It
is
Ruthie. I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m right, but I am.

“I’m fine.” I haven’t heard Ruthie’s voice in so long that I’m also surprised that I recognize it. It’s like someone’s rung a bell and it matches the exact same sweet note that resides in my memory. But the sweetness is tinged with sadness. I want to muffle the damn bell.

“I talked to Tilton. I didn’t get very good details. What has the doctor said?”

The doctor isn’t to be trusted. “Minor,” is what I tell Ruthie. “It’s all minor.”

“Really?” Ruthie says. Her voice doesn’t seem older at all. Her face appears in my mind but it hasn’t aged either. She’s just a teenager, yelling at me, breaking me. “A minor heart attack is still a heart attack, which is major.”

“I know why you’re calling.” Ruthie always has an ulterior motive. I remind myself that I can’t trust her.

“I wanted to feel you out on coming to help with Tilton. I thought—”

“No. You want what we don’t have.”

Ruthie pauses, as if she’s confused, but then says, “I gave up wanting something from you years ago. Group therapy.”

“Group therapy,” I huff. You’d never catch me talking about my feelings with a group of strangers. “You want what they all want. The seventh book of Harriet Wolf.”

She goes quiet and suddenly I’m afraid she’s going to hang up. I know that I have to be tough with her but I still want to hear her voice, just a few more notes. I’m about to apologize, but then she says, “I was in graduate school, English literature, at one point. Do you know what being Wee-ette’s granddaughter afforded me? A shitty marriage.”

For years, I took control of the story like a gatekeeper, as they put it in that news article. Why didn’t I see how stupid that was, just as it was stupid of my mother to love her characters because she could control them, when she had a daughter who would have done anything for her—anything? I should have recognized that my Ruth was always going to do what she wanted to. That was her way. I hear her breathing, waiting. There’s nothing I can do. She’s coming. I can feel it. “Ruthie,” I whisper.

“Yes?”

“Be gentle with Tilton.” I close my eyes, so tired now.

“Of course I’ll be gentle with Tilton.”

“Unfortunately,” I say, “she loves you deeply.” I take the phone from my ear and plop it into its cradle.

The room is quiet except for the distant racket of televisions, blathering up and down the halls, canned cheering and laughter—like there’s a party I haven’t been invited to. And if I were invited? Say what they will about me, but I know my own mind. I’d refuse to go.

M
rs. Gottleib’s station wagon is full of air. It shifts around my body. It’s like flying. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mrs. Gottleib’s station wagon somehow relies on air; the motor breathes the wind in through its grille, pours it through the engine, and the car itself grows lighter because it’s so full. I’m afraid that it will tighten my own lungs like a bellows—the way a bird’s body works as a bellows—and I will start to lift. This is why there are seat belts. Plus the fact that people die in car wrecks. It happens all the time.

Luckily, (a) my surgical mask cuts down the gusts of air that I swallow. The mask was in our emergency kit, in the event that I ever go outdoors. And (b) I’m in the backseat, the safest spot in the car. Mrs. Gottleib wanted me to sit in the front beside her, but studies refer to it as the death seat. She told me to say no more. So I didn’t. And (c) I have a heavy bag on my lap that secures me to the vinyl seat. It’s filled with medical necessities: sunscreen, which I’ve already applied; insect repellent; EpiPen; various medications; water bottle; gauze; peroxide; Band-Aids. I’m wearing my mother’s wraparound cataract sunglasses. Mrs. Gottleib tells me that I look like Michael Jackson. Ruthie used to have his albums. Mrs. Gottleib’s comment makes no sense to me.

I ask if there’s a train station out here. I don’t tell her that my father, George, left with Marie Cultry while taking her to a train station in winter.

She says, You want to ride a train?

No thank you!

Also, in Mrs. Gottleib’s station wagon you can forget you’re moving. It’s like the world is moving past you. When you stop, the world stops. There’s nothing between me and the birds. Nothing but air. Air that they could beat their wings through and ride. I see them. They see me.

There are many houses; each is a space to be filled. In each house there’s a family, ones who leave and ones who stay. Sometimes there is a building and it’s filled with apartments. In each apartment there’s a family of people who leave and stay. In each house, there’s also the Wee-ette. Not my Wee-ette, but theirs. My Wee-ette is now alone in our house. She doesn’t like to be alone. I closed my eyes in her bedroom—empty now, a chamber that doesn’t hold a heart and lungs—and I told Wee-ette that I’m going to see my mother in the hospital via Mrs.
Got
tleib’s station wagon. I will be home soon.

She sighed like curtains rustling.

I am the keeper of all the pacts: Wee-ette’s old ones; the two with my mother; the four between Ruthie and me; and the one between just Wee-ette and me, which made me the keeper of the pacts. I checked on them before I left. The screwdriver is tucked under Wee-ette’s old typewriter. I used it to unscrew the heating vent on the far wall of Wee-ette’s bedroom. It’s been a while since I’ve checked. The vent’s grate popped off, a little sticky. There were the sheet metal innards of the heating system. The house is old, the walls so thick there’s a ledge—a perfect shelf for a little box—and then the ledge falls away as the duct goes straight down. See how there are spaces within bigger spaces! On the shelf was an egg container, only half-dozen-sized, made of cardboard. I pulled it out and opened the lid. Inside the two rows of egg pockets—more spaces within a bigger space—were the wound-up pieces of string. All of our pacts—ten total—each with its masking tape tab labeled with initials, date, and keywords. Six of them include me and Ruthie together, either with or without our mother. Return & Save is the most important. The others are about sharing Halloween candy and not telling our mother things about boys Ruthie had a crush on. The Halloween candy is gone. The boys that Ruthie had crushes on probably sell things for a living. But it would be good to have another pact between Ruthie and me. Just one more to set it all straight forever.

I didn’t want to leave the pacts. I wanted to fit them in my pocket, for safekeeping. For me to safekeep them or them to safekeep me? I don’t know. But I didn’t disturb them. After giving each a little pet-pet, I closed the egg carton, put it back in the heating vent, screwed the grate back, and replaced the screwdriver under the typewriter.

Now I close my eyes because Mrs. Gottleib says that we’re here in the hospital parking lot.

I tell her just a minute, just a second, okay okay okay?

The hospital is full of rooms where people come and go and come and go and each person who comes and goes is a cavity of heart and lungs and some of them stop working.

Mrs. Gottleib says no. It’s my car, Tilton, and I’m kicking you out of it. I’m not going to baby you. You’ve had enough of that.

She opens the door. Mrs. Gottleib’s station wagon has filled me up with its air. I’m light-headed. I tell her that I have breathed car air into my head.

What? I can’t hear you through that stupid surgical mask!

I repeat myself loudly.

We’re at a hospital, she says, so if that turns into something real, we’re at the right place.

Do you think it could turn into something? I ask.

Each of Mrs. Gottleib’s pupils is small, like the dot you’d put into an apparatus to look at an eclipse, which can blind you.

Tilton! Out of my car. Shake your can!

I’m scared of Mrs. Gottleib. I’ll tell Wee-ette this when I get home. I’m scared of not only her eclipse-apparatus pupils but also her nose, a fleshy crocus bulb; her nostrils, which are large and stiff; her arms that wag when she’s agitated; and her growling voice. I decide to shake my can. I slide across the backseat. I put my foot on the cement, which is not at all like that on our back patio. I stand up and the sun is different too.

Mrs. Gottleib slams the door so loudly I think the station wagon might fall to pieces. Come on, Tilton, she says. Let’s move.

And so I move. And my breath is caught in the mask like breath in a cupped hand. Like a trapped whisper.

Doors auto-open. We step through. They auto-shut. When I was little there were doors like this at the grocery store that opened when you stepped onto a rectangular rubber mat. These doors don’t need mats at all.

The halls are loud. Room after room. Bags hang from metal poles. Tubes. Nurses and doctors. Food on trays. Everything on wheels—like roller skates. Like if the world shifted, everything could roll away.

Mrs. Gottleib holds a grocery bag of my mother’s clothes. She talks to a woman behind a desk. The woman says something I can’t hear. We move down a hall. Doors open for us and close, with deep sighs, as if they are annoyed by us.

Your mother might be out of it, Mrs. Gottleib tells me. She might say weird things. The drugs can make you loopy. That’s how it was with Albert.

Albert is Mr. Gottleib and dead. He died in a hospital, which is where people come to die.

Lord! That’s what I say, just like Wee-ette always did when she was annoyed by callers, book talkers, and fan letter writers. Lord, Lord!

We come to my mother’s room, 315. I want to tell Mrs.
Got
tleib that I’m like the American widgeon. A nervous duck, it’s always the first to sense trouble and will throw itself into the air, flapping wildly, calling out in alarm. In this way, the American widgeon alerts all the less nervous ducks, who spend their time paddling around, dipping under, and letting their feathers bead. I feel danger inside my ribs.

When we walk inside, my mother is asleep. She’s small and tinted a different color, ashy. The room smells like the nurse’s station in elementary school, like someone is trying to cover up the smell of barf. Lord, Lord, Lord.

I step closer. Her face is pinched, her eyes closed. Her large head looks small. Her hands are pasty. Tubes are stuck into her and taped down. Her lips are slightly pulled back, revealing a pectinate smile. I touch her skin. It’s chilled.

She’s dead! I scream. She’s dead, Mrs. Gottleib! She’s dead!

Mrs. Gottleib grabs my flapping arms. She’s not dead! Mrs. Gottleib screams back at me, but it’s a hushed scream, which is awful.

Then my mother’s eyes flip open like someone turning on a light, and she’s not dead. Just like that. Dead, not dead!

Mrs. Gottleib says, Jesus, Tilton! You’ll put the whole floor on code blue!

I said not to bring her here! my mother screams at Mrs. Gottleib. Look what you’ve done. Then my mother says to me, gently, Tilton.

An animal moans on the other side of the curtain in the very same room. Do they let animals in here? I screech.

Tilton, come here, my mother says.

I fall toward her like I am on wheels. I put my head on her chest just like she did before Wee-ette died. Her stomach is fatty but her chest is dainty. I press my ear to it and hear her lungs and heart. Somewhere in there, a soul. That’s what Wee-ette called her body: her soul case. Nothing more, she told me. Just a ratty old soul case!

Are you okay? my mother asks.

I am.

Is your thumb okay?

It’s okay.

Is Mrs. Gottleib taking care of you?

No.

Mrs. Gottleib isn’t taking care of you? You aren’t staying with her?

No.

Mrs. Gottleib rolls her eyes. Tilton is twenty-three years old. She doesn’t need a sitter.

My mother rubs my arms as if I might have caught a cold while not staying with Mrs. Gottleib. Did you eat?

I had cereal and Tang.

Did you sleep?

I don’t tell her I watched television. This would upset her, but I do confess that I took a bath in the bathtub, alone, but I leave out wearing my nightgown while doing it.

Are you sticking to your routine? she asks me.

I fixed Mrs. Devlin’s television. I haven’t written her daughter a poem for her wedding yet, though.

My mother pulls me close. There’s a new ending, my mother tells me. She pets me like a cat—long strokes—an exaggeration of the little pet-pets that I gave the pacts in their carton pockets.

And then I think of the lightning hitting the plane, the hunk of engine hitting the road, dead parts of people, men with torches, and my father—George Tarkington—cupping Marie Cultry’s elbow. A new ending?

A nurse in the doorway wants to know if everything is all right.

It’s all fine, Mrs. Gottleib says. Just a little panic.

Don’t trust Ruthie, my mother whispers to me. The seventh book.

I don’t say anything when my mother mentions the seventh book. I made a pact with Wee-ette before her soul case broke. I keep my pacts.

Mrs. Gottleib says, Your mother is agitated, Tilton. She needs to rest.

My mother is highly agitated. Her eyelids flutter as she tries to close them.

Homing pigeons have a complex set of systems, I say. Magnetoception lets them see magnetic fields because of a certain nerve. They smell home, which is called olfactory navigation. They feel temperatures too, and they know the way the sunlight slants a certain way when they’re getting close. Sometimes, they fly over roads and follow them home like people. Ruthie is going to find her way home and you will too.

And my mother says, My pigeon, my pigeon, my sweet pigeon.

I say, Come home, come home, come home.