The Umbrella Lady Read online

  Then her eyes widened, and she practically leaped out of her chair to open her purse. She took out a penny, showed it to me, and dropped it in the jar before sitting again quickly.

  “Sorry. I promised less sadness, but sometimes it just sneaks in like a snake. When I was married and wanted someone inside me, I was too old to have a baby, but I didn’t listen to my doctor. My husband, Arthur, did not want us to have children anyway, so he was actually happy about it.”

  “I saw a towel with an A on it in the bathroom, so I didn’t use it.”

  She smiled. “You could have used it. That was Arthur’s towel. He liked his initials on everything he owned, including me.”

  I widened my eyes.

  “That’s a joke,” she said. “A sick one, but still a joke. Anyway, you are smart. You ask the right questions.” She leaned forward. “That’s how old the towels are, too, by the way. But they’re washed and ironed and kept in a nice-smelling closet. On Saturdays I do the house laundry, Saturday morning. You can help with that tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow still seemed like ages away, and I was still very confident Daddy would soon arrive and we’d leave.

  “I bet your mother didn’t let you iron,” she said quickly. “She was probably afraid you’d burn yourself, but my mother made me iron even before I was your age. At first, it was heavy in my hand, but as time went by, I got stronger and stronger, and my mother gave me more to do, like wash the kitchen floor every night. And I’d do a very good job of it, too. I can remember that my mother was happy about that, not because she was proud of me but because she had less to do. My mother was lazy, a lazy Dazy. When I think about her now, my blood starts to boil. She made me into more like an old lady than a little girl. I don’t think I was ever a little girl, and… Oh.”

  The way she stopped made me realize that I had paused chewing my second piece of pizza and had closed my eyes for a few seconds. Her voice was making me sleepy, I realized.

  I forced my eyes open.

  Had I done something wrong, something impolite?

  “Of course, you’re tired, and here I am going on and on about my mother and house chores,” she said. “Just hearing about them can exhaust someone as young as you. Maybe you should lie down and rest. We can warm up the rest of the pizza when we want it, and we can have the ice cream later, too.”

  “What about Daddy?” I said, looking toward the door again. “You said the stores were closed.”

  “Oh, yes, a while ago.” She thought a moment. “But he certainly should have been here by now.”

  “Where is he? Where could he go if the stores are closed?”

  “Sometimes men stop in bars to get a quick refresher.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A little alcohol to give them courage,” she said. “Courage to live,” she added, sounding bitter. “My husband, Arthur, did until his ankles got too swollen. Drinking at home never did enough for him. He was a very unhappy man. He drank himself silly sometimes. Most people don’t have a magic jar for pennies, and the sadness makes them weak and small. But don’t worry. As soon as your father comes here looking for you, I’ll come get you.”

  She stood up and came around the table, holding her hand out.

  I didn’t like what she had said. Why would Daddy leave me at the station while he had a refresher?

  “Guess what I have in the bathroom next to what will become the blue bedroom.”

  “I don’t know,” I said sharply.

  I was getting more annoyed about Daddy. Who cared about what was in the bathroom? I looked at the front door again. Lately, Daddy hadn’t come home for dinner, but Mama always put his plate and silverware and napkin on the table. It still would be there in the morning when he had his breakfast. The plate I had left for him here at the Umbrella Lady’s house stared me in the face.

  Suddenly, I realized the Umbrella Lady was shaking her hand in front of my eyes, urging me to take it.

  I stood up quickly. “Maybe we should go to see if Daddy’s having a refresher,” I said, stepping back. If she said no, I could run out and down the street. “You don’t have to come, too,” I said, even though I didn’t know where a refresher place might be.

  “Oh, children can’t go to places like that, and there are simply too many of them for us to visit. We’d be out all night going from one to another—and what if your daddy came here and there was no one home? He might leave.”

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “Now, don’t be stubborn. You’re just being difficult because you’re tired. A tired child usually gets herself in trouble.”

  “Daddy should have been here by now,” I insisted.

  “Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Balloons without air.”

  She shook her hand at me again, the anger dripping from her face. I took it, and she closed hers tightly around mine. Maybe she was afraid I would run out anyway. Was she going to reach for my hand every time I walked through her house and was close to one of the doors?

  She was smiling again.

  “In the bathroom, you have a brand-new toothbrush with brand-new delicious-tasting toothpaste,” she said, and took me directly to the bathroom to open the cabinet above the sink to show me. “And guess what else I had in the dresser in the bedroom that has to be painted,” she said, handing me the toothbrush.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said quickly.

  I really meant, I don’t care. I want my father. That’s all I want.

  I know I sounded cranky, but I was too tired and upset.

  “Of course you don’t know, nor can you think of anything. You can’t stop thinking about your daddy. I know that, but I’m going to help you stop enough to get some good rest. On the bed are beautiful, soft pajamas. Brand-new, too, with nice blue slippers. You change into them and lie down. I’ll come back and put out the lights,” she said. “I bet you fall asleep as quick as a sparrow at sundown.”

  “When did you put the pajamas there?” I asked. “They weren’t there when you showed me the room.”

  She stared at me with a look of annoyance, and then she suddenly smiled.

  “You’re not shy. That’s good,” she said. “It will keep me on my toes, and goodness knows, when a woman like me lives alone, she needs someone to keep her on her toes. I forget what I’m doing or why sometimes, but not as long as you’re here. That’s for sure. I ran to the room and set out the pajamas while you were washing your hands, Miss Marple.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A famous woman detective. Go on, do your business and brush your teeth,” she said, and walked out, closing the door behind her.

  After she left, I gazed at myself in the mirror. I looked as tired as Mama often did. I thought I looked more like her than I did Daddy anyway, tired or not, even though she had light-brown hair and mine was closer to the color of a dark melon. Daddy’s hair was really more chestnut brown, which everyone who ever saw him said made his brown eyes with green specks more striking. Mama had eyes closer to the color of mine. Hers were soft blue. Mine were a darker blue, “blueberry blue,” Daddy said. Mama’s lips were slightly more orange than mine, but Daddy used to say, “You’ll never need lipstick, either.” My complexion was what Mama once called light olive. She often complained that her own was too pale.

  “Once it was attractive for women to look like this, especially wealthy women, but now… now I look like I have poor circulation. I should spend more time outside, but I’ve become too agoraphobic.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. When she talked about herself, she often seemed to be talking to herself and not to me, because she said so many things I didn’t understand with words I never had heard, just like some of the Umbrella Lady’s words, and Mama often didn’t look at me when she spoke like that. Sometimes I felt as if I shouldn’t be listening. I was hearing secrets.

  But no matter what terrible thing she said about herself, I thought Mama was beautiful, and surely
Daddy had, too, just like he had told me sometimes when he came into my room to get me to sleep. Like her, I had what Daddy called a “button nose.” Mama was thin, very thin, before the fire, so her face looked like the skin had been stretched over it and zipped up at the back of her head. She wore her hair up most of the time and cut it herself when she thought it was too long. She trimmed mine, too, and used to spend more time brushing it than she did hers. She brushed it so long sometimes that I would fall asleep, and when I woke up, she was often still brushing it and didn’t stop until I spoke.

  Tonight my hair looked raggedy, the strands curled. I hadn’t washed it for days since I had taken a bath in the hotel room after the fire and really hadn’t washed it well, anyway. Daddy hadn’t helped me like Mama often would. I thought I still smelled like smoke and remembered that I had thought Daddy did, too. Even now, in the Umbrella Lady’s house, I still smelled it, especially coming from my hair. For the past few days, instead of brushing it, I just pushed it away from my face. I wished I could push the bad memories out just as easily.

  There was a blue-handled brush on one of the shelves on the right side of the sink. I picked it up and turned it over; it looked brand-new. There were no one’s hairs in it. I tried running it through my hair, but it kept getting stuck in the small knots, so I gave up.

  I used the toothbrush and toothpaste she had given me. I did like the taste, but even though I was very tired, I wasn’t eager to change into pajamas and lie down. What if Daddy came in a few minutes? I’d have to change back into my clothes. No, I thought. I won’t do that. Maybe I’ll go back and wait in the kitchen.

  But the Umbrella Lady was right out there waiting for me when I opened the bathroom door, her arms folded under her breasts. She stood blocking the hall, as if she thought I might come out of the bathroom and run off. I glanced at the side door. She saw where my eyes had gone and stepped to her right.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to change into pajamas. What if Daddy comes?”

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, smiling and unfolding her arms. “Don’t you think your father would want you to rest first anyway? And what about him? He needs a little rest, too, doesn’t he? Don’t be selfish. Little girls are mostly selfish by nature, and some never lose that characteristic and become selfish women. Their prized possession is a mirror. Come along, now.”

  “I don’t know if I should,” I insisted, but not strongly. I hadn’t thought of Daddy being that tired. Certainly, it made sense that he would be. Maybe I didn’t want to think of it. I was becoming more and more like Mama, hating logic. She used to say she wished one and one didn’t equal two, because the truth more often than not could be ugly.

  “Well, I do know,” the Umbrella Lady said sharply. “We’re not going to let him rush right out this time of night. What kind of people would we be?”

  Would we be? She made it sound as if we had been together a long time.

  “Come along,” she said, seizing my hand roughly. “I can see you need lessons on how to behave.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I want my father.”

  “Want, want, want, the call of a buzzard,” she muttered.

  She practically dragged me into the bedroom, where I saw the new pajamas on the bed. They were blue but had little moons on them, too.

  She picked the pajama top up off the bed and held it up in front of her.

  “Now. Isn’t it pretty? Won’t you be happy wearing it? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for being so recalcitrant?”

  She glared at me, waiting for my answer.

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “Surprise, surprise. I guess your mother wasn’t as good a teacher as she thought she was,” she said. “It means defiant, uncooperative. Resistant! Understand?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t like what she had said about Mama.

  “My mother was a very good teacher.”

  “Oh, Lord, give me strength,” she said. She lunged forward and began to help me take off my clothes, a little roughly, I thought.

  “These clothes… need to be washed,” she said. She brought my two-piece top and pants to her face and sniffed. Then she leaned forward and sniffed my hair. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I should have had you take a hot bath first and tried to wash your hair. We’ll do that first thing when you wake up, and then I’ll have to change the sheets and the pillowcase and wash the comforter, because everything will stink.”

  “Stink?”

  “Of course it will. You were on a train and sitting at a station so long. Little girls have to always smell fresh, like a new day,” she said, and started to put the pajamas on me. I was too tired to do anything but let her.

  She pulled back the comforter. I hesitated and looked at the doorway.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “I promise. I’ll wake you up if your father arrives. I’ll bring him right to this room so he can see that you’re doing fine.”

  She patted the pillow and waited.

  Still a little reluctant, I got into the bed. Then she rushed at it, tucked me in, and touched my forehead with the ends of her fingers. She moved them up to my hair and shook her head.

  “What is wrong with me? I don’t know why I didn’t think you would need to be washed first. I’m simply out of practice when it comes to caring for someone other than myself, especially someone so young. We’ll both have to learn a lot about each other, and quickly, too. Do you say prayers before you go to sleep?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? But you don’t have to ask God to help you if you’re a good person. Good people make God proud of creating Adam and Eve, even though they were a big disappointment to him. Do you at least know that story?”

  “A little,” I said.

  “Oh, I have so much work to do. I can see God’s a bit of a stranger to you.”

  “God’s like a chef,” I said, to show her he wasn’t.

  “What?”

  “He helps those who help themselves. Like it says on your apron,” I told her, even though that didn’t make any sense to me, either.

  I closed my eyes, tired of the day, and when I opened them again, she was smiling.

  “You are a wonder,” she said. “Why anyone would leave you at a train station…”

  I vaguely heard her going on about it.

  “Precious, pretty… someone to be proud of…”

  I had to explain it logically; otherwise, I’d be more frightened than I was. “Daddy had to buy things quickly,” I said drowsily.

  From the moment I had taken her hand at the station until now, there was a very slight but clear trembling inside me. It never had stopped rumbling. But exhaustion hit me hard and quick, and keeping my eyes open was becoming more and more difficult.

  She shook her head and clicked her lips. Then she went to the door, flipped off the light, and walked out, closing the door behind her. I wanted to stay awake to hear Daddy come in, but almost as soon as I closed my eyes, I fell asleep.

  I didn’t wake up until morning light started to move across the bedroom, washing over the bed and making me squint. For a few moments, I forgot where I was. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. As if she was waiting outside the door for the sound of my awakening, the Umbrella Lady entered.

  “See?” she said, gesturing toward the window. “A new day always brings hope. How do you feel after a good night’s sleep, Saffron?”

  “Where’s my daddy?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s not here, my sweet little princess, but don’t worry about it right now. First, get up, and we’ll get you washed up properly,” she said, moving to the dresser and opening the top drawer. “Afterward, you can put on this nice blouse.”

  She showed me the blue blouse and opened the second drawer.

  “I have a blouse in my carry-on.”

  “Not like this. And besides, I had to take everything unimportant out of it and put it in the garbage. I
put the bag there, too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It smelled, just like sadness. If we kept it, you’d look at it and remember sad things. We’d be putting pennies in the jar forever. Now, here’s fresh underwear,” she said, plucking a pair of pink panties out of the drawer.

  “I had new underwear in my carry-on bag.”

  “Stop saying that. I just told you. We don’t want anything from a smelly bag when we could have fresh things, now, do we?”

  “My bag wasn’t smelly. It was brand-new.”

  “Of course it was stinky. It was with you, and it was on the train for hours. Trains stink inside because of all the people sitting and sweating. Okay?” she said, moving to the closet and opening the door. “Now, here is a brand-new skirt that should fit you well.”

  She took it off the rack, where there were other clothes, and held it up.

  “See how nicely it matches the light-blue blouse. Oh, there’s a nice creamy white light sweater that you can wear over the blouse, too.”

  She moved quickly to the dresser and opened the bottom drawer to pluck it out to show me.

  “I’m sure your things in your smelly carry-on bag were not as pretty.”

  “Whose clothes are these?” I looked up at the picture above the bed. “Are they hers?”

  “Of course not. She’s not real. I told you. She’s a picture in a frame. They’re your clothes, of course, and they’re all clean and fresh. I’ll run that bath for you,” she said. “Remember we said we would do that? It won’t be enough to wash your face and hands.”

  She turned to hurry out before I could say a word.

  “But Daddy…” I said when she was already gone. I heard her start the water in the tub.

  “You’ll wash your hair, too!” she cried from the bathroom. “Let’s see if we can get you smelling sweetly.”

  I got out of bed but sat there, still feeling dazed and confused. Why had I come here? How long had I been here? She returned and stood in the doorway, staring at me.

  “Why do I have to wash my hair now?”

  “You know very well why your hair doesn’t smell good, Saffron, and I don’t simply mean your riding on a train for hours and hours and sitting on a dirty train-station bench where bums probably sleep.”