The Umbrella Lady Read online

  “We’ll need something to write on,” she said, taking back my coloring book. She opened it and found some blank space, which she carefully tore out.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not ruining any of the pictures. I’m leaving your name, my address, and my phone number for him to find,” she said as she wrote on the paper. “I think it would be a good idea to put this under the corner of the coloring book so the coloring book keeps it from blowing off the bench when we leave, because there is quite a breeze, and a breeze can become wind. Okay?”

  “I don’t know. He bought it for me so I would have something fun to do.”

  “When he comes for you, he’ll bring the coloring book, won’t he? And then you can finish it when you continue on to wherever you’re going with him,” she said rapidly, like someone who had lost all her patience. Mama could get that way, and the words would burst out of her mouth in an explosion that would hurt my ears. Daddy had a way of shutting his off on the inside. At least, Mama said he did.

  I thought about what the Umbrella Lady was saying. She obviously wanted me to think hard about it. It was like one of those logical things Mama told me she wished wasn’t true. I wished this wasn’t true, but it was cold, and I was hungry.

  “Well?”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  She smiled. Her face could change so quickly, including the shapes of her eyes and her chin, as quickly as someone taking off one mask and putting on another.

  “You really are a smart little girl. I just knew the moment I set eyes on you that you would be,” she added, and picked up my bag so I would stand up. I started to, but it was as if Mama had her hand on my head pushing me down, so I stopped.

  “Oh, you mustn’t be afraid of coming with me, Saffron. I’m as full of good things as a jar of mixed jelly beans.”

  She smeared her friendly smile over her face again. If I had a grandmother like the ones I saw on television, she probably would look like the Umbrella Lady looked right now, I thought. I shouldn’t be afraid. Maybe she was someone’s grandmother. Maybe her granddaughter or grandson was waiting for her at home and she wanted me to meet her or him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rat scamper across the train platform and disappear off the far corner. Just as the Umbrella Lady had predicted, a stronger breeze lifted the strands of hair off her forehead, where the wrinkles deepened and spread to her temples, making it look like her face was cracking.

  My stomach churned, not only from the ugly odors but probably because I hadn’t eaten for some time. Mama used to say, “Someone inside is complaining that she’s starving.” Then she would laugh, and we’d have lunch. The Umbrella Lady would probably say, “There. Your clock has told you.”

  When I looked up, I realized that because of the station lights, I couldn’t see any stars. Stars were always comforting. With the darkness on both sides and across the tracks, it felt as if I had slid into a large black box. I shivered. Where was Daddy? I wondered. Why was he taking so long? Why didn’t he think I’d be cold and hungry? I didn’t want to stay here and wait any longer, and her idea was logical and seemed okay. Even though I wished I could, there was no way I could say no.

  I rose again, and she put the note and the coloring book on the bench carefully, just the way she had said she would.

  “There. He’s sure to find it. He’ll look and find it because this is where he left you, right?”

  I nodded. She took my hand, and we started away. Her palm felt rough, and her fingers were thin and long like wires clamped tightly around my hand. When we stepped away from the station lights, I finally could see some stars in between gray-black clouds that puffed up proudly as they floated over them. She looked up, too.

  “I always carry an umbrella,” she said. “Just in case. Weather commentators don’t get it right too often. Despite their science, I call them fortune-tellers. And besides, more things can fall out of the sky than just rain, snow, and hail. We just don’t see them, but they’re falling all over us. Believe me.”

  I had no idea what that meant. I turned and looked back when we reached the corner of the platform. What if Daddy was angry at me for leaving? I remembered how his face could get so ugly and scary that I thought he could wear it on Halloween.

  I stopped walking.

  “Now, now,” she said. “You don’t want to change your mind, do you? You can’t sit in the cold much longer without getting sick, and how would your father like that? He’d blame himself, and everyone would be upset. That’s not a way to travel, now, is it, sniffling and coughing?”

  I shook my head, but I looked back again.

  The coloring book would be the last thing he had given me, and I wouldn’t have it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When you’re older, time seems so much more important. At home, I would go almost all day without looking at a clock or caring what time it was. Mama would tell me when I had to do my schoolwork and when I could play. It was only lately that even she would forget or not care what time it was. She didn’t check my schoolwork and often didn’t give me anything new to do. My father didn’t know because he was still angry about her not sending me to public or private school.

  “You’ll be responsible for what happens,” he had told her.

  It became just like the Umbrella Lady later described. My stomach would tell me I was hungry, and I would go looking for lunch. Mama might be just sitting in the old maple wood rocking chair with the cushioned seat and staring at the picture in the ruby wood frame over the fieldstone fireplace, a picture of a sailboat heading for the horizon. A woman was seated, and a man was standing and pulling on a rope running up the mast. I used to think it was heading toward the edge of the world, and if the sailboat continued, it would fall over and tumble down into nothingness. Maybe Mama had given me that idea when she said, “I hope he gets it turned around before it’s too late.”

  Whenever she saw me standing there, she would realize it was lunchtime and get up. More and more, she forgot and I had to remind her.

  Anyway, I rarely thought about the actual time. However, I always believed most adults looked at a clock at least a dozen times, if not more, every day. They certainly looked at their watches that much. Daddy usually did, so I thought everyone did, except Mama.

  She had a watch in a jewelry case. It was a watch that Daddy had bought her when they first were married. It was gold, not with a round face but shaped more like a triangle. It had a tiny diamond next to each number. On the back was inscribed Love, D. There was a tiny scratch next to his initial. I always wondered if it had been there when he had first given it to her. He had said it was custom-made for her, but one day she decided that she didn’t like anything on her wrist or her fingers. She wouldn’t even wear her wedding ring anymore, and she never wore a bracelet or a necklace. I remembered Daddy complaining about that, asking her why she let him buy her all those beautiful things if she wasn’t going to wear them, and her saying, “I’m not a Christmas tree. Stop trying to decorate me. It won’t change anything.”

  I had waited for him to say something else, say at least that he knew she wasn’t a Christmas tree, and what was supposed to be changed? He had merely shaken his head and walked away with his shoulders slumped. Then he had stopped, turned around, nodded at me, and said, “When she finally goes to school, give her the watch.”

  Before Mama could say anything, he had added, “Time is what staples us to reality, Lindsey. Otherwise, we’re like astronauts untethered in outer space.” He had waited a moment and then went “Ah,” waved his hand as if he was chasing a fly away, and walked on to his home office to, as Mama said, dive into and swim in his computer to either get ahead on or finish his work at the insurance company.

  I was thinking about time while we were walking to the Umbrella Lady’s house, because the streets were so quiet. It had to be very, very late, or as Daddy might tell Mama when he realized she wasn’t getting me ready for bed, “It’s a day past her bedtime.”

  No ch
ildren were playing outside, and there were no cars going up and down. There were no stores on this street. We had passed a few on the way from the train station, one that was by a gas station, so I stopped to see if Daddy was in there.

  “Wait. Daddy,” I had said, but I didn’t see him.

  “Satisfied?” the Umbrella Lady said when it was clear there weren’t even any other customers in there. She tugged me by my hand.

  We continued until we turned on a street with more houses and no stores. The lights I could see through some windows were dim, if they were lit at all. Some looked lighted only with candles, like when the electricity was broken. It seemed like everyone was asleep. I wished now that Daddy had saved Mama’s watch from the fire. He could have given it to me before we had left for the train. If I had a watch, I would have known that it was much later than I had imagined it to be while I was sitting at the station. Now it was probably so late that even parents had put themselves to bed.

  I couldn’t tell if the Umbrella Lady wore a watch, because her thick black wool coat sleeves reached her hands. The sleeves looked too long for her. Maybe she had shrunk since she had bought this coat. Mama told me people could shrink, but mostly inside. I didn’t understand and I had stopped asking Daddy about the strange things Mama often said, because he would simply shake his head or close his eyes and put his hand on his throat as if he was going to choke himself.

  If I had seen the time and added up all the hours that had passed after Daddy had left me, I would have been more worried, and probably, I would have cried out my concern immediately to someone who was rushing to a train or coming off one before the Umbrella Lady had approached me. Seeing how late it was now, I was tempted to pull my hand free of the Umbrella Lady’s hand and run all the way back to the bench on the train-station platform.

  I nearly did, but she said she was going to make us a pizza, and afterward we would have ice cream. I stopped thinking about how late it was and how much past my bedtime. She said I could choose vanilla or chocolate. I thought only about that and wondered if I could ask for a little of both. Daddy did that once, and Mama accused him of not being able to make a decision.

  “I did make a decision,” he had said. “I decided to choose both.”

  He had looked at me and smiled. She had left the kitchen without having any dessert.

  “She leaps on me every chance she gets,” Daddy had said. I didn’t think he was talking to me. He had looked like he was talking to himself, just like Mama often did. “There is no forgiveness in that woman. Every day she drives in another nail.”

  “In where, Daddy?” I had asked him, and he had looked at me, surprised, as if I had heard his thoughts and not his words. He had simply shaken his head and eaten more ice cream, both flavors. I had, too.

  “I think you’re going to be very happy soon,” the Umbrella Lady said now. “One thing’s for sure, you’ll be happier than you were back at the train station. Maybe than back where you lived, too,” she added. “There’s my house,” she said.

  It was a real gingerbread house, orange-brown with a white roof. The house was on the end of a street like our house was. I knew it was called a cul-de-sac, which meant the street didn’t go anywhere, and at the end it circled. People who didn’t pay attention to the sign that read No Through Street would have to turn around in front of our house to get out. Mama said she hated all that traffic. That was why she had insisted on keeping the curtains closed in the front windows, but Daddy had said it made our house more valuable for us to be on a cul-de-sac, and closing the curtains all day made it dreary.

  “It’s not ‘all that traffic,’ either, Lindsey. You exaggerate everything.”

  “Not everything,” she had replied. “Some things exaggerate themselves.”

  He had shaken his head, glanced at me, and walked away.

  Our house was a two-story house, and so was the Umbrella Lady’s, but ours was bigger. Hers had more land around it, so the nearest house was what Daddy called “too far away to hear an elephant scream.” Mama didn’t care about having neighbors. She said they asked too many questions and lived to make senseless chitchat. If I was with her and we saw someone come out of his or her house, she would rush us over the pebble-stone sidewalk that led to our front door, telling me not to look back at him or her.

  “You’ll turn into stone,” she would say. I had no idea what that meant, but I would walk as fast as she did over the sidewalk.

  There was a short but wide walkway of silvery square stones that looked more like metal plates in front of the Umbrella Lady’s house. They went from the gate to the three cement front steps. Bushes almost as tall as me were on both sides. The patches of lawn had grass the color of straw. Her porch went only a few feet to the right or left of the front door, and it had nothing on it, not even a chair. One of the spindles under the railing was split. The lights were on in the house, so I wondered if my suspicions back at the train station were right. Maybe there was someone else living with her, someone who was waiting for her to come home and would be surprised she was bringing me, like that grandchild I had imagined, actually hoped, was there.

  “There’s no one else but me,” she said, as if she really could hear my thoughts. “I’m a widow. Do you know what a widow is?”

  Before I could answer, she said, “Widows are women who were married but whose husbands have gone on to heaven first to get everything prepared for them. At least,” she said, leaning toward me a little, “you hope they went to heaven.”

  She laughed, and then she opened the gate and led me to the steps. I looked behind and down the dark street to see if Daddy might be hurrying after us after he had read her note, but there was no one there. Shadows looked thicker and wider, because some of the houses I had seen dimly lit had no lights on at all now. Her hand tightened a little more around mine, and I looked up at her, surprised. It was as if she was afraid I would run off.

  “You must watch your step,” she said, shaking my arm for emphasis. “You must look where you’re going. Most accidents happen at home. Did you know that? People fall when they don’t pay attention or they are thinking too many things at once. People are careless mostly at home. That’s how most fires happen. Someone might smoke in bed or leave the gas on in the kitchen stove.”

  I felt my heart begin to beat faster.

  Who had told her what Daddy said Mama had done?

  She smiled. “You won’t have any accidents here. Don’t worry,” she said, softening her grip. “I’ll make sure of that. I’ll be like your guardian angel. Who else but a guardian angel would have rescued you from a closed train station on a cold, dark night when who knows what was scampering about you?”

  She paused, put down my bag, and opened her door. She stepped back to urge me in. The short entryway had a full-length oval mirror in a maple wood frame on one side and a maple wood coatrack on the other. There was a bench made from the same wood beneath it with a pair of shoes and a pair of furry boots on it. The floor looked like it was the same stone as the walkway.

  “Let’s take off our coats,” she said, and helped me take off mine. She hung it on the rack and then took off hers. She didn’t have a watch. Her dress had long sleeves buttoned at the wrist. “We take off our shoes, too,” she said, “and leave them under this bench when we come in. Did you have to do that at home? It keeps your house cleaner.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell her how clean Mama kept our house, probably cleaner than hers, even though we didn’t take off our shoes. She removed her black shoes and then sat me on the bench so she could slip off my shoes.

  “Don’t worry. Your feet won’t be cold. I left the heat on seventy-five so it would be warm and cozy when I returned,” she said. “Take your bag. We can’t leave it in the entry.” I wasn’t going to part with it anyway, but what she said reminded me of Daddy leaving his briefcase in our entryway.

  I picked it up, and she put her hand on my back and directed me to the kitchen, which was on the right.
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  She had me sit at a small wood table that had four chairs of the same wood as in the entryway. Her floor was light brown like the tile floor in our kitchen. Everything else about her kitchen looked older. The paint was chipped, peeling, and scratched on the white cabinets. The counters were darker stone than the floor and cluttered with canisters, old newspapers whose paper had turned yellow, pill bottles, and a few different shakers, more than salt and pepper and sugar. She had a window over her single sink. It looked dirty on the outside, and I could see where it needed to be cleaned around the edges of the windowpane. Mama would use a cotton swab. Daddy had said she didn’t just clean dirt but pounced on it.

  “Just sit here and watch me work on our pizza,” the Umbrella Lady said. “I have them in the freezer, but I put lots of extra good things on them before I bake them. Any little girl who eats my food will grow quickly, like a magic tree, even if she doesn’t ask questions.”

  She laughed at what she had said as if someone else had said it.

  I sat and pulled my carry-on bag closer to me. Although there was nothing cooking or baking in her kitchen, it smelled like there was. Mama had told me that the aromas of thousands and thousands of meals were in the walls of old houses, even a house like ours, and when the wind blew through, it would bring back something made as far back as twenty years ago. The wind was blowing harder now, so I thought that might be happening. It also made me worry a little about my coloring book and the Umbrella Lady’s note back at the train station.

  Suddenly, a snow-white cat came into the kitchen and paused to stare at me suspiciously. It had eyes as green as new spring grass.

  “Oh, look who’s come to say hello,” the Umbrella Lady said. “Mr. Pebbles. Just hold your hand out, and he’ll rub his head against it,” she said.

  I did, and the cat did just what she had predicted. Then he curled up at my feet and looked at the Umbrella Lady expectantly, as if he had done something worth a treat.