Cloud and Wallfish (12 page)

Cloud’s grandmother must have been watching her like a hawk, because Noah didn’t see her again all that week.

She came up during a dinner conversation, however. Noah’s mother was happily talking about her research and about how well it was going.

“School’s ending, but I got so much data these last few weeks!” she said. “Enough to keep me happily busy all summer. And now I know the school people, so I’ll have a running start on round two in the fall when the schools start up again.”

“School? School? When do I get to go to school?”

His mother looked at him with those bright, sympathetic eyes of hers.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry about that. I’ve put lots of requests through, you know. I’ve told them it will not reflect well on socialism if you die of boredom. Everyone’s just worried about what someone somewhere will think. I’ve been meaning to take it up with Frau März again — she’s the one my official requests are supposed to trickle through. Although this whole week I haven’t seen her. She’s been ill, apparently. I’ve had to do this final round of schools on my own. Means I’ve triumphed over the Berlin bus and S-Bahn system, though.”

“She’s sick, Frau März?”

“That’s what they told me. Haven’t seen her in the stairwell recently, either, but I don’t want to trouble her by knocking on the door. That seems too forward.”

“She has a kid living with her, you know,” Noah said. “Her granddaughter.”

“Really?” she said. She was so surprised, she almost broke her own rules — Noah could see her swallowing her next question. “How — nice! Someone for you to play with.”

Noah waited until he and his mother were walking to the supermarket to buy more cardboard pyramids filled with milk before bringing up Frau März and Cloud-Claudia again. Then he unfolded his theory, such as it was.

“I think Frau März is holding Cloud prisoner. Locked up, like in the Rapunzel story. Maybe Frau März isn’t really her grandmother. Maybe she’s more like an evil step-grandmother.”

“Holy moly, now you’re exaggerating!” said his mother. “And did you say her name is Cloud?”

“Cloud-ee-ya,” said Noah, letting the syllables do whatever they wanted. “Her parents left her here while they went on vacation. We were talking outside, and Frau März saw and got mad and pounced on her and dragged her away. Poor Cloud! Frau März for a grandmother!”

His mother thought about things for a moment.

“Well, maybe I’ll have to knock on her door after all,” she said. “If Frau März is really sick with the flu or something, and trying to take care of a child, she might actually need some help.”

Noah could tell she was making up her mind all through those sentences. Noah’s mother didn’t like interfering in other people’s business, just as she didn’t like other people interfering in her business. But on the other hand, once she had decided something needed to be done, she left doubt behind. Just set it down like a package and did what needed to be done.

So on their way back up the apartment stairs, Noah’s mother shifted the grocery bag into her other hand and said to Noah, “Here goes!”

And pushed the buzzer beside Frau März’s door.

By the time Noah had caught his breath, the door had already opened, and here was Frau März.

Oh, she must really be sick, after all!
thought Noah, angling himself a little behind his mother.

When Frau März had come storming out to the non-park to drag Cloud away, all Noah had been able to see was her anger. But now he saw that this Frau März was a far cry from the tidy, in-control, carefully dressed minder who had shown up at their door some weeks ago to pick up his mother. She was frazzled. Strands of hair, half gray, half brown, were spilling loose from the bun on top of her head, and her eyes were puffy and red.

“Frau März!” said Noah’s mother. “I’m so sorry to bother you! I heard you were sick —”

“You should not be here,” said Frau März, but she said it not in an angry way, or not
only
in an angry way, but with flat despair as well.

Noah shrank farther behind his mother.

“And bringing the boy,” said Frau März. “Bringing the boy. What do they know, at that age?”

“I’m so sorry,” said Noah’s mother. “I just wanted to say, if we can help — bring you soup, or take care of the child for you. Jonah said there was a child —”

“Yes, a child. The child is mine,” said Frau März, as if that were a very bitter thing indeed. “All mine now.”

And there was a strange whistling sound from a little farther down the hall, the faint sob of a shadow.

“If we can help . . .” said Noah’s mother, but you could tell she was beginning to feel they might be out of their depth. “Frau März, you have a fever, I think. You need rest. Let us take the child upstairs to our place for a while. She and Jonah can play, we’ll feed them supper, and you can rest.”

“Rest won’t help,” said Frau März. “Have you ever lost any children? My only daughter is gone.”

“Oh, no,” said Noah’s mother, and Noah could see the tremor of shock running through her. “Oh, I’m sorry. The child’s mother —”

“And her father,” said Frau März. “Mother and father. Car accident, in Hungary.
They were on vacation.
”

Cloud’s shadow fled down the hall and into a room.

“I am so very sorry,” said Noah’s mother. She put down her shopping sack and reached out as if to take Frau März’s hands, but those hands stayed put, on the frame of the door and on the doorknob, and there was no taking them. “Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have troubled you, but I thought you were ill and we might be of use. My husband will be very sorry, too, to hear this. If there is anything we can do, we would be glad to help. And the child —”

“Cloud,” said Noah in a whisper from behind her back, a whisper with a thousand stops and starts to it. He hadn’t meant to speak at all, but he wanted the shadow in the hall to have a name.

“Yes, Claudia,” said his mother. “Claudia is welcome upstairs, anytime you need some rest. Come now, Jonah.”

Frau März closed the door without saying any of the usual polite phrases: she just let go with her hands and it swung shut.

Noah had never seen his mother unable to speak, but for a moment, she just stood there, silent and still, in front of that door, her arms sagging.

Then she picked up the grocery bag and marched upstairs, with Noah behind her.

“The poor little girl,” she said to Noah’s father, many times over. And also, “The poor woman. She looked like she had been through the wars. They must have been holed up in that apartment for days, grieving. Think how awful.”

Noah’s father was if anything even more shaken by the news than his mother.

“We can’t do much, but I’ll certainly make them soup,” he said finally. “They may not have been eating properly. It was a good idea, offering to have the girl up here sometimes. Maybe she’ll rethink that. I’ll ask when I take the soup down.”

And Noah just felt that terrible awkwardness that blankets everything when bad things, really bad things, happen. At least his parents seemed to have some idea of what to do. But Noah could do nothing. He thought about what it would mean to have your parents swallowed up by something horrible like a car accident, and his mind went numb.

It was like being a changeling.

It was like being dragged from one world into another, different one, where everything was colder and lonelier.

Two months ago, he wouldn’t have been able even to imagine it.

But now, changeling that he was, and having lost
some
things — like his birthday, his name, and Oasis, Virginia — he could feel a flicker, only a flicker, of what it might mean to lose
everything,
and it made him feel sick inside, as if the ground under his feet had gone all wobbly.

His father chopped meat and vegetables, simmered things in the apartment’s largest pot, and then, when it was ready, hours later, went with Noah’s mother downstairs to deliver supper. Thank goodness neither of them suggested Noah should come along. The terrible awkwardness made him want to hide up here, out of view of Frau März and the Cloud shadow.

He sat at the table, looking at books, hoping his parents would forget to ask about Cloud coming upstairs with them for a visit, and of course feeling bad about wishing for something so selfish and immature.

But when he looked up from the table, there they were in the doorway: his mother, his father, and the thin, pale, indoors version of Cloud-Claudia, her eyes like shadows hiding down a long, dark hall.

When Cloud-Claudia was shepherded in through the door by Noah’s parents, Noah’s first, heartfelt, shameful reaction was to wish he could run away and hide. What could he say to her that wouldn’t be stupid? He had never known anyone who had lost her parents in a car accident.

“Hallo,”
he said, looking mostly at his parents’ shoes.

“Claudia’s having supper with us and staying a little while,” said his mother firmly. “You two go look at books or something in the living room while your dad and I get supper finished. Or do a puzzle. Here, have some cookies to tide you over.”

“Okay,” said Noah, and then he found enough courage to raise his head and look at Cloud-Claudia.

She had her mouth scrunched tight and her chin pointing forward. You could tell she was trying to be so haughty and grand that no one would dare make fun of her or pity her too much. Or pat her on her bristly blond head.

“Come in,” he said to Claudia, and he pointed to the coffee table in the living room. They had to move the three coffee-table books, the big one filled with GDR photographs, and the other two, about mythology and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, but Claudia started looking at the Bosch paintings, her fingers trembling.

“Pictures of other places,” she said. They were worlds filled with demons and goblins and strange tormented creatures. The worlds were beautiful and dreadful and interesting, all at once.

“Yes,” said Noah. “Not ours, though.”

She stared at them for a long time and then pushed the book away.

Noah took one of the cookies — Hansa Keks, said the box — and nibbled it, so that it would seem normal for him not to be talking. The cookie wasn’t bad; it tingled in the mouth a little with the suggestion of molasses.

Not knowing what else to do, he took a puzzle, which his parents had brought all the way from Virginia, and dumped the pieces out onto the table. It was a puzzle made from an old painting of the Tower of Babel, which turned out to be a good subject for a jigsaw puzzle, because of all the little people laying bricks or climbing up ramps or greeting the ships bringing more supplies for the tower, which was rising splendidly into the heavens. Every inch of that jigsaw puzzle contained a whole story, a whole world, in miniature, and that makes for a satisfying puzzle — unless you’re the type of person who loves pure white puzzles with a million pieces and no picture at all. There are such people.