Building Blocks (6 page)

“You'll have to wash up by yourself and bring down your grandparents' tray and wash that when they're through. There's fried chicken on the sideboard and nobody's to touch it—it's for your father and Uncle Andrew for supper. Stevie, drink your milk up. The rest of you—put yourselves into your rooms now for naps. I'll phone when it's time to come out.” Suzanne and the twins left the table obediently.

Mrs. Connell's eye fell on Brann. “You're not much of a friend,” she said to him.

Brann met her eye and his mouth closed on the words he could have said, that he wasn't any friend of Kevin's. Because then he wouldn't' have any reason for being there and then—he couldn't begin to think about that. She didn't even know him, how could she pretend to know what kind of friend he was. Besides, keeping the little kids in order was Kevin's job and he wasn't even related to them. (But he was. But that wasn't what he meant.) Besides, she had a pretty unrealistic idea of what it meant to be a friend. Besides, next time Brann would help more. (Next time? What did he mean, next time?)

Mrs. Connell was watching Kevin. Finally the boy spoke: “I'm sorry.” His eyes slid away from hers and he picked up his spoon. He looked like he was trying not to cry. Mrs. Connell spat out an angry breath of air and took Stevie out the back door, a brown paper bag in her other hand.

Brann got up and ran some hot water into the sink. He washed and rinsed the six bowls, then the six glasses, then the six spoons. He dried them and carefully put them away in the cupboards.

Kevin washed his own bowl and spoon, glass, and the bread plate. Brann dried. After a while he asked, “Why
were
we late?”

“I think the trains must have been running late. And I haven't been late but once before, honest.”

“Your mother sure has a temper,” Brann said. “Suzanne does what she says, though, even going up for a nap.”

“We always do, for a couple of hours after lunch in the summer.”

“You too?”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. His whole face sagged. He looked at Brann and his eyes were gray pools into which Brann could not see.

“What do you do up there?”

“Nothing much. You gonna go now?”

“No,” Brann said. He didn't want to stay, but he didn't have any other ideas about what to do. No ideas at all. “At least, if it's OK with you I'll stay.”

Kevin's face lit up. “You mean that? I thought—after my Mom—and this morning—and I—It's not very nice here.”

Brann shrugged. “It's not as bad as all that.”

“Yes, it is,” Kevin answered, and Brann couldn't really argue.

•   •   •

This time, as they walked through the house, Brann looked at the rooms they passed through. There was a dining room with a glass chandelier hanging over the heavy table and a living room where the sofa and chairs all looked fat and soft to sit on. In his own house, the furniture was modern, the rooms were sparsely furnished and they were always filled with light during the day. In this house, the shades were down and a misty light floated through the cluttered rooms.

(His own house wasn't even built yet. If he went to find it, it wouldn't be there. How was he going to
find his way back? When he didn't even know how he'd found his way here. His mind ran away from that question.)

They went up a broad staircase, with a wooden banister that gleamed with polish and use. The stairs had carpet on them, worn smooth. The long hallway he'd walked in darkness last night was shorter than he'd thought. Six doors opened onto it. Kevin opened two and looked into the rooms behind.

Suzanne and Hannah shared a bedroom. Hannah was asleep, but Suzanne was sitting on her bed playing with a teddy bear. She hid it behind her when she saw the boys.

“Hey, Brann, you look like you've got some guts, you wanna come swimming with me?”

“In that river? Not on your life.”

“Not in the river—I'm not stupid. I know a house that's empty. They went away somewhere for the summer. They left the pool full. It's risky, you could get caught, but the pool's just waiting to be swum in. what do you say? Kevin never will—he's a sissy.”

Brann looked coolly at her. “I might,” he said. He waited for her victorious smile to get settled on her face before he added, “and I might not.”

Billy had a big room all to himself. He was sitting at the window. “I'm here so get out,” was all he said.

“Stevie will sleep in with Billy when the new baby comes,” Kevin explained to Brann as they went down the hall. “That's my parents' room and that's Stevie's. There's a guest room.” They climbed up the dark attic stairs.

“How come you're upstairs, not with the rest of them?” Brann asked.

“So I can keep an eye on my grandparents,” Kevin explained. “In case something happens, or they need something.”

“Because you're the oldest.”

The two old people sat in a small living room across from their bedroom, at the end of the hallway. A fan pulled warm air through the low-ceilinged room and out the one window. The man was looking at a magazine, his face expressionless. The woman was piling their lunch dishes onto the tray. “It's ready, Kevin,” she said, in her airy voice. “Hello. Are you a friend of Kevin's?”

Brann hesitated. He had already met her at breakfast, but maybe she had forgotten.

“It's Brann, Brann with two n's,” Kevin said, with
a smile to take any criticism out of his words. “You met him at breakfast, but you forgot. I'll take the tray down, Grandma.” He picked it up and left the room. Brann was left standing.

“It's good for Kevin to have a friend over,” the woman said to Brann. “He doesn't have enough friends. Did you meet him at school? Kevin's going into the fifth grade next fall. I had a teacher in fifth grade—long division, Miss Mead. That was my last year at school.” She tilted her head and looked up at Brann through her washed-out eyes. “I surprised you, didn't I? But it was—we left school earlier in those days, but you wouldn't remember that. Do you remember Miss Mead?”

“No ma'am,” Brann said.

“She always wore a sprig of something pinned on the collar of her blouse. In the fall it would be a mum or a maple leaf. In winter, holly or a bit of pine. But in spring, you never knew what it would be, daisies or crocuses, roses, jonquils, hyacinth, quince or cherry blossoms. . . . She wasn't happy—surely you recall that. No young man would want to marry the school teacher, of course. She went away, or so I heard. I don't know for sure—I'd left
years before. When will you leave school?”

“After college, I guess,” Brann said, without thinking.

But that was all right. She wasn't listening to him. Her mind was far away. Brann edged towards the door. Kevin came back into the room and stood beside Brann.

“It was always oatmeal for breakfast, all my life,” his grandmother complained.

“You had pancakes this morning, Grandma.”

“Don't talk about this morning—this morning doesn't count. It was always oatmeal. Thick, pale, pasty.
Stick to your ribs
, she'd say. I could have thrown it up.”

“Anyway,” Kevin said.

“What do you know about it? What did I know then? I was your age once, just you remember that. All the oatmeal days. All the oatmeal people. Not you, Kevin.”

Kevin shook his head. “Yes, I am.”

“You're oatmeal with honey then, or crumbled maple sugar that coats the top and melts down the hills of it. But it won't make any difference. I'm sorry, Kevin.” Her hands rubbed nervously against one another.

“I'll tell you what,” Kevin said. “Shall I make your breakfast tomorrow and bring it up on a tray? Scrambled eggs, the way you like them. And toast with the crusts cut off and raspberry jam to put on it.”

“I wouldn't want the jam,” she said, quieter.

“The coffee in your best china cup, from the cupboard in the dining room. And on the tray—I'll put a lace doily and I'll get a rose in a vase; a rose that's just coming into bloom so it'll last for days. I'll make the tray and I'll carry it upstairs and I'll knock on the door.”

“They won't let you.”

“We can pretend. Can't we? Brann's got to go now.” He signaled Brann with his eyes. Grateful, Brann sidled out of the room.

“Who's Brann?” her voice asked, getting high again. “Should I know him? Do I have a grandchild Brann?”

“Brann's nobody, you don't know him.”

“I didn't think so.” The voices followed Brann down the hall.

Kevin's room was as he remembered it, with one window and the bed up against the rest of that wall. Blocks lay scattered around on the floor. Brann closed
the door behind him and crouched down to pick up the mess he'd made last night, waking up.

What was he going to do?

How was he going to get out of here?

He began stacking the blocks into piles, to avoid thinking.

On the back of the door, a picture had been taped to the wood. It showed a farmyard and some hills beyond and an orchard. It was pretty crude and childish, done in pencil then crayoned in; but the house and barn looked solid, as if they were really there. The lines of the house and barn were strong, and the perspective was right. Brann's father had taught him about perspective. There were some animals in the picture. Brann's attention was caught by the chickens who scrabbled around for the feed being thrown to them by a stick-figure woman. Those chickens were good, really good. They looked alive, as if in a minute they would start moving around. Brann stood studying the picture, holding one of the curved blocks in his hand. The block felt familiar, and that comforted him. It should feel familiar, he thought; they were his same blocks, just paler than he was used to, light white-yellow. He rubbed his hands over the block,
knowing that the oil from his skin was sinking invisibly into the warm wood. He could almost see the dark workroom and the shape of his father's worktable and himself, asleep in the fortress his father had built out of these same blocks.

Kevin jarred him out of his dream, opening the door and entering the room. But Brann had figured it out. It was simple after all. It was impossible, but simple. It was the blocks. They had brought him here and they would take him back. So he wasn't trapped in the past. He could get out whenever he wanted, and he knew how.

Relief made him giddy. It was all impossible, of course. Blocks couldn't do that. But he
was
here, in this now that wasn't his own.

He dropped the block. Kevin's face, looking at the farmyard picture, came into sharp focus. Brann grinned and put a hand on Kevin's shoulder. He could feel happiness spreading out from him. “You drew that, didn't you?”

“Yeah.”

“I like the chickens—they're really good.”

Kevin studied it. “You think so? I thought so too. But there's an awful lot wrong with it. The barn is
always in the shadow of that big elm—see it? I drew it from memory, but I didn't get much right.”

“What is it?” Brann asked, although he had already guessed, and he knew he was right—his brain was swinging fast and sharp.

“My Uncle Andrew's farm. Where I go every summer, to work, and to get out from underfoot. I like that place.” His eyes were dreaming into the picture.

“Why?” Brann asked. “I mean, farming's really hard work, isn't it?”

“I guess,” Kevin said. “But it's—I don't know. You're working and you're tired, all day long, but—Uncle Andrew's funny, he makes me laugh. He talks, all the time, but not about what to do next, about what life is like, sort of. It sounds stupid. But it's interesting, and I have ideas there, pictures and things. It's an easy place to live. He's my godfather, anyway. He married my mother's sister and he made me these blocks when I was four. He worked on them all one winter.”

Kevin sat down among the blocks. Slowly, placing each block thoughtfully, he began to build a tower with them, and connected it by arches to a series of small outbuildings. Brann watched.

“I'm gonna have to give them to Billy soon,” Kevin said. “He doesn't take care of things, but my father says I'm too old for blocks now and Billy's old enough. Then Stevie will be. I wish I didn't have to.”

“You can get them back in the end,” Brann said.

“Then this new baby boy—”

“It could be a girl.”

Kevin shook his head. “Mom says it's a boy.”

“Anyway, you can get them back when everybody else has outgrown them. For your own kids.”

Kevin shook his head. “I don't think so.”

“People grow up and marry people,” Brann told him impatiently. “And they have kids.”

“I'd only want a small family.”

“I have a small family,” Brann said.

“Only one or two.”

“What about three?” Brann asked.

“I don't think so,” Kevin said.

“Can I build a wall along here?” Brann asked.

“Could you build it over there?” Kevin pointed to a line of floorboard six inches farther away. “It'll look better. More as if it was real. You don't mind playing with blocks?”

“Not a bit,” Brann said. “Not these blocks.” His
relief had turned into a feeling of secret celebration, that danced inside of him. Because he was the one, Brann Connell, who had done this, gone back in time; that made him pretty special, special and terrific. There must be some special reason that got him back here.

Kevin was looking at him, smiling shyly. He was such a little kid, Brann thought, and not much of a little kid at that. About the opposite of special. “Are you my friend?” Kevin asked, with the same hesitating smile, his eyes slipping away. “No,” he said, right away before Brann could think of an answer, “That was stupid. Forget I said it, OK? I mean, I know you'll be moving on and all that.”