The Umbrella Lady Read online

  I nodded, expecting that sort of answer. She wasn’t crying or grimacing.

  “She’s not my grandmother,” I said. “That’s not why I’m living with her.”

  She looked surprised and then smiled, looking so happy that I had told her the truth.

  “Why, then?”

  I was silent, thinking of how to explain it all to someone else when I often had trouble explaining it to myself.

  “You want the reason to be a secret?”

  “Maybe. For now,” I added. She had such a sweet, trusting face. I could envision myself telling her everything someday and being happy I had.

  “I won’t tell anything you tell me when you feel like telling me,” she said, looking more excited. “Does she do magic with her umbrella? I never saw her walking without it. No one has. And it’s the same umbrella for years and years, my mother says.”

  “No, no magic,” I said, smiling and thinking that in the beginning, I’d had a similar thought. “But she thinks she always needs her umbrella. She says she’s prepared for anything that falls out of the sky, and more falls out of it than rain and snow.”

  She nodded as if she completely understood. “If I went out into the sun, I’d have to have an opened umbrella right now. It’s not good for me.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t imagine why the sun would not be good for a sick person. “Why not?”

  “I could get burned. I’m more susceptible to being burned because of the medicines I take. You know what ‘susceptible’ means, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling. “Mrs. Dutton stresses vocabulary. She thinks great words in our language are dying.”

  “My mother says she was a very good but very strict teacher, so strict that she couldn’t be a teacher now.”

  “She thinks so, too. What grade are you in?” I asked.

  “Eighth,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be thirteen,” I said. It sounded more adult than twelve.

  “You’d be in my class if you went to our school. My brother, Stuart, says he’s never seen you in the building. He’s in the tenth grade.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be going to public school yet. I go to homeschool.”

  “So do I. Now.” She coughed and fought to stop it quickly. “Mrs. Marcus comes over twice a week to catch me up on the work I’m missing. She’s a private tutor my parents hired for me. You have to work harder with tutors. There’s no escape.”

  She laughed at what she had said, and I smiled.

  “Does Mrs. Dutton make you work hard?”

  “Very. I guess I’m learning a lot. I passed all the state tests I had to take with a hundred percent.”

  “A hundred? All of them?”

  “Yes. I’m doing work tenth and eleventh graders would do.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She makes me read three books a week, books much older kids are reading.”

  “O-M-G! You can do that? Read three books in a week?”

  “Yes. I can watch only a certain amount of television, and even less if I fall behind.”

  “I fall asleep watching most of the time. Maybe I should have my mother get her to teach me instead of Mrs. Marcus.”

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. “Should I ask? There’s room in the classroom she created for me. And I can help you, too.”

  “No, no.” She smiled. “I’m just wish dreaming. That’s all I do now. If I asked my mother to do such a thing, she would get so upset that she would pee in her pants.”

  “Pee?”

  She started to laugh, but it became a cough. She seemed unable to stop. I saw she was gasping, too.

  “Are you all right?”

  She couldn’t answer. She continued coughing and gasping. I heard the screen door opening and quickly pulled back and retreated enough to be unseen even if someone looked over the railing. I could hear the nurse’s voice and then her mother’s. I crouched and listened and waited. They were speaking low, and I thought Lucy was crying. When it grew very silent, I inched my way back and peered through the spindles again.

  She was gone.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could all the way home.

  All I could think was that she coughed and coughed because she was talking to me. They had to take her into the house, and they might question her. I had made her sicker. Would she tell her mother I was there?

  Would they come to the house to complain to Mazy?

  Once she found out, Mazy would be furious.

  I stood inside, trembling and listening for the phone to ring or the sound of Mazy’s footsteps on the stairway. The house was very quiet, so after a few more minutes, I tiptoed up the stairs and peered in at her. She was still fast asleep. I went to my room and looked out the window toward Lucy’s front porch. She hadn’t been brought out again. Despite what had happened at the end, it had been so special for me, talking to someone my age, even if she was so sick and even if it would get me in trouble.

  I sat on the bed and reviewed every word we had said to each other. She was so nice, I thought. I couldn’t wait to sneak back there. I would tell her the truth, tell her everything. She would get better, and we’d become the very best of friends. Mazy might not be happy about that, but why did she have to know until it had happened? Then she couldn’t stop it, I thought.

  Hours passed. No one came to complain, and no one called. She’s keeping me a secret, I thought. Surely that means that she doesn’t want me to stay away. She wants to be my friend as much as I want her to be mine.

  Mazy woke, but she still didn’t feel that well, so I made her some hot oatmeal and brought it to her room. Later I gave her tea and honey, and she told me she was very proud of me. I had come through a storm, whatever that meant. Her phone didn’t ring, and no one came to our door to complain. I went to sleep dreaming of all the things I would do with Lucy. We would talk for hours and hours, and maybe, eventually, Mazy would let her sleep over or her mother would let me sleep there. It was certainly nice to feel good about something since Mazy had revealed my father’s last call.

  Two days later, I saw Lucy had been brought out again. I was sure she was looking forward to seeing me. She kept her head turned mainly in our direction. Every day, I worked hard on my assignments so Mazy would give me more free time. She wanted me to get fresh air, but she was still quite strict about how far I could wander from the house. I was tempted to tell her the truth but was too fearful she would be so angry that I would never have an opportunity to make Lucy a real friend. I had to be very careful, even about my thoughts. She had a way of looking at me, squinting, and then asking something that bounced very close to what I had been thinking.

  “You can learn a great deal about nature and from nature, but you don’t have to go far to do it,” she told me. She was still getting over her flu and slept on and off. She said she generally didn’t believe in going to a doctor because they “prescribe from the hip most of the time just to get rid of you, especially when you reach my age.”

  I just listened when she ranted on a subject until she was tired of it herself and urged me on to do a chore, my schoolwork, my hour of fresh air. When that time occurred, I didn’t hesitate, but I was smart enough not to look too eager. I didn’t want her even to suspect I had been talking to Lucy. A week later, I walked out slowly with her warnings ringing in my ear, hesitated, and pretended to be studying a wildflower in case she was watching me and then slowly meandered off to the left before charging through the woods to the rear of Lucy’s house.

  It was a little later in the day, but I hoped she was still out there waiting for me. When I stepped up to the porch and she saw me, she smiled so brightly that I had no doubt she had been. She looked so happy to see me that I thought today she would get well. I had mixed feelings about it. Once she was well, she would return to school and be with her friends. Maybe then she wouldn’t want to talk to me anymore. When that happened, I would tell Mazy that if she didn’t put me in the school, I would ru
n away. Even though it made me feel good to think about threatening her, I knew in my heart she would just laugh. She might even say, Go ahead. Run off. Who’s stopping you? See what it’s like being out there alone.

  I was sure she wouldn’t tell me where my father was. Where would I go?

  “Sorry I didn’t come to see you sooner,” I told Lucy, “but Mazy has been keeping me quite busy.”

  I certainly didn’t want to tell her I was forbidden to see her, forbidden to go this far away from the house. She might even be frightened about Mazy coming to her house to complain to her mother, and not vice versa.

  “Mazy?”

  “Oh, that’s the name she likes.” I spelled it and told her about Dazy.

  She widened her eyes and smiled. “That’s funny. How does she keep you so busy?”

  I rattled off all the house chores I had daily.

  “You’re like her housekeeper.”

  “When I began to live with her, she had me paint my bedroom.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve done some touch-up painting around the house from time to time, too.”

  “You do sound busy.”

  I told her how many hours I had to be in the classroom and the time set aside for my reading.

  “I do some of the cooking now, too.”

  “You do? I never did any cooking, even before I got sick.”

  “It’s okay. I like it. We read recipes together and experiment. She said I make the best veal Milanese.”

  “I don’t even know what that is. So why do you live with her? Where are your parents?” she asked. “Can you tell me now?”

  I wanted to tell her. I certainly trusted her, but it was as if Mazy was there, standing behind me, waiting for me to break her most important rules.

  “My mother died,” I began. I was going to tell her everything, but that feeling I had about someone standing behind me wasn’t my imagination.

  Before I could continue, I felt his hand on my shoulder and spun around to look into the angry face of a boy with dark-brown curly hair. It grew down to the nape of his neck. His hazel eyes were wide open, like the eyes of someone who had seen a ghost or something. The anger in his face was settled at the corners of his mouth, because his full, dark-pink lips whitened at the corners. He wasn’t ugly, but his nose was sharp, and his cheeks bubbled as he clenched his teeth. He was tall and thin, his fisted hands pressed into his hips. He took a step back as I turned fully to him.

  “Why are you talking to my sister?” he demanded. “You were told to stay away.”

  I thought his voice was too deep for someone his age. It seemed to echo up from a deep well. His faded yellow T-shirt looked a size too large. He was wearing torn jeans and a pair of very scuffed dark-blue running shoes.

  “Leave her alone, Stuart,” Lucy said. I could hear her struggle to raise her voice.

  The boy narrowed his eyes. “I’ve seen you in the woods many times,” he said. “You talk to trees. You’re a nutcase and a half.”

  I glanced back at Lucy. Was she going to think I was weird now, too?

  “Well? You do talk to trees, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” I admitted.

  He smiled and then looked angry again. “Do they talk to you?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  His wry smile faded. His eyes widened to make room for fear beside his anger. “Did you touch my sister?”

  “Touch her? No.”

  “Stop it, Stuart,” Lucy said, garnering as much volume as she could manage.

  “You’d better get out of here,” he said. “And stay away, too.”

  “I’m not hurting anyone.”

  “I’ll hurt you if you don’t go home,” he said. He took a step toward me, but when I stepped to the side and raised my hands, he quickly stepped back. “Get outta here. You’re weird.”

  “No, she’s not,” Lucy said.

  She sounded weaker. Now my presence was making her sicker, I thought mournfully.

  “I’ll see you another time, Lucy,” I said. “Hope you get better.”

  I started off toward the woods.

  “Why don’t you just walk down the street?” Stuart called after me. “You going to tell the trees what happened? You really are from the woods. You’re weird!” he shouted. “You stay away!”

  I ran harder. When I looked back from the forest, he had gone up on the porch. I stood there watching him talk to Lucy. Then he surprised me by kneeling down and hugging her, lowering his head against her. She had her hand on his head. I was angry, but that made me sad. I wished I had an older brother or sister. Lucy was sick, but she was lucky, too. She had someone who wanted to protect her.

  I started to cry, not really knowing if I was crying about her or about myself. Maybe I was crying for both of us. I remembered when my mother would embrace me like Stuart was embracing Lucy, especially if I had a cold or a stomachache. Mazy did provide anything a girl like me would need to live, but in my world now, there were no embraces, no gentle brushes of my hair or my cheeks, no real kisses, and no moments when you could feel you weren’t alone, you’d never be alone.

  I swallowed back all my tears before I went back into the house. If Mazy saw me crying, she would surely be suspicious enough to think I had gone off too far. I could hear her in the kitchen, and she had heard me enter.

  “I’m in here,” she called. “Having a cup of tea.”

  She was sitting at the table and looked up quickly when I entered. There were those suspicious, penetrating eyes. She was still in her nightgown. The flu had washed away anything that had disguised her age. It made me think, maybe for the first time, that she was an old lady.

  “There is a nest with hummingbird eggs just off to the left,” I said. She nodded. She loved to watch hummingbirds. That lie worked for me.

  “I have a feeder somewhere. Maybe we’ll hang it up with some sugar water for them.” She sipped her tea and thought. “My mother liked hummingbirds. My father thought they were large insects.”

  “Do you have pictures of your mother? I mean real pictures.”

  “Buried somewhere.” She seemed to snap out of her warm thoughts. “It’s better not to dig up the dead. Why don’t you make our pasta tonight? I won’t tell you anything to do. You make it all up yourself and surprise me.”

  She rose and put her teacup in the sink. When she looked at me again, I thought she could see I wasn’t telling the whole truth, but she ignored it for now and left to lie down and leave me alone in the kitchen. She did look more tired than I could remember.

  I stood there staring at the stove and the counter, feeling as if I were dangling off a cliff.

  The ringing of the phone spun me around. It stopped, but the little light told me Mazy had picked up the receiver.

  I felt the trembling start in my legs and move up my spine.

  The light went off. It was still very quiet, so I went to the refrigerator to look at what ingredients we had for a pasta sauce.

  She must have come down the stairs without touching a step. I never heard her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Pebbles rise. When I turned around with two tomatoes in my hand, I saw Mazy standing in the doorway. She looked like her hair was on fire. Her eyes were wide open, and the grimace on her face resembled a smiling skeleton on Halloween.

  “You are a liar, and you are deceitful,” she said.

  I didn’t move; I didn’t speak.

  “That was Mrs. Wiley, whose daughter is dying. She was hysterical.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her. She wanted to talk.”

  “You are not to leave this house. Don’t bother with the dinner. Go to your room.”

  “What?”

  She stared with such coldness in her eyes that I couldn’t look at her. She really did frighten me. I put the tomatoes back. She stepped aside as I ran out of the kitchen. When I closed the door of my room, I didn’t cry. I found the letter my father supposedly had written and read it repeatedly, as if it was a pra
yer, a chant.

  “What did you do to me, Daddy?” I whispered. “Why don’t you want me?”

  I didn’t need him to hear the question. I didn’t need him here. I knew the answer. I always knew.

  What chilled my heart even more was the thought that maybe Mazy knew the answer, too.

  Maybe she always knew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a deeper, wider silence in the house now. When I walked through the hallway and up and down the stairs, the stillness made me keenly aware of my very heartbeat, quickened with fear because of the cold storm of anger Mazy had quietly rained down over and around me. I even imagined I could hear Mr. Pebbles’s paws stepping over the floor when I watched him cross a room or start down the hallway, but I didn’t hear him purr the way he usually did when he was lying beside me. Could Mazy turn him against me, too?

  During the days that followed, Mazy didn’t confine me to my room or take away any of my small privileges. She inflicted more pain by looking through me as if I were no longer there. At times, she appeared distracted and confused herself. It was as if what had happened affected her more than it did me. It was all my fault. She repeated things she had just done, like washing a cup moments after she had just washed it. I saw her taking more pills for her aches and pains, and if she didn’t think I was watching, she didn’t attempt to stand straighter or avoid rubbing her hip. Maybe it was because I had seen death in someone as young as my mother and knew how fragile life was, but I suddenly saw Mazy as being older, a lot older. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I needed her. She was, after all, the only other person who was really in my life. It didn’t matter whether or not I chose her. She just was.

  And when I recalled that first night at the train station, I had to admit that she chose me. She could have just as easily left me there, telling herself that I was not her responsibility. I would have to admit that there were times when I wished she had left me, but there were far more times when I was grateful. We ate together, cooked together. We had even slept together in the same bed. She had treated my colds, my bruises and scratches, with the same concern any mother or grandmother would have. She bought me pretty things and raved about how smart I was. I couldn’t imagine feeling closer to a real grandmother. I did expect it would be painful for her to be so angry at me, just the way it would be for a real grandmother to be furious at her granddaughter. Who better than me knew how heartbreaking it was to be fuming at someone you loved?