Never Fear (41 page)

“
Except Dad,” Nick
muttered. Jack gave him an elbow.

“
Just waiting for you to
give me the green light, Judy. Let’s see... this one’s
called
Esmeralda’s
Stocking
.”

“
Esmeralda... like
in
The Hunchback of Notre
Dame
?” Jack asked, grabbing some fresh
asparagus to cut.

“
As a matter of fact, the
story opens with two quotes from it. Interesting,” Grandpa said and
started to read.

ESMERALDA’S
STOCKING

LISA MANNETTI

“
That straw pallet is a
gift from heaven.”—Victor Hugo

“
So, you have the gift of
prophecy?”—Victor Hugo

West Chester, New York:
Summer 1961

An end-of-August day and the wind
picked up—nothing unusual she told herself; nothing she hadn’t felt
nearly every late summer she could remember. The humidity dropped,
the sky went from the faded, washed-out gray of her daughter’s
favorite shorty pajamas to the sharp, clear blue of the
Mediterranean. Nothing she hadn’t seen before—a routine weather
pattern—not unlike the round of her weekdays these last five years:
coffee and a cigarette, making breakfast and later, lunch for Robin
and, like today, folding clean clothes while she napped in her room
on the second floor. Still, she felt a subtle shift—as small,
perhaps, as a rill of soil sliding down the slight mound of an
anthill—and the breeze prickled along her skin and she felt the
tiny hairs on her arms stand up. But it was nothing. Nothing. Old
memories of the anticipatory feelings that came when school was
about to start, shopping for # 2 yellow Ticonderoga pencils and new
Buster Brown shoes, and crisp September air, and Robin was about to
start kindergarten. That was it. She glanced out the sunroom
window, and saw the wind toss the dark green leaves of the old
maple, heard their whispering interplay; watched the rush of moving
shadows on the lawn. It was nothing after all, and surely the dream
she’d awakened from that morning—the dream about her father’s death
on Christmas Eve 1950—meant nothing. Just another long-ago memory
from the time before Robin came into the world. All life was
change, Paulette knew; she’d been a nurse back before her daughter
was born and seen the death angel by her father’s bed, by a hundred
patients’ beds, and a dream or a memory, even a painful one, was no
harbinger—the changes ahead, she was sure, did not hold anything
ominous, did not cradle another death.

*

With the wind-driven damp sheets
flapping against the skin of her arms and legs, clothespins moving
steadily from flowered apron pocket to fingers, to her clamped lips
and back to hands, to the rope stretched across the back yard, she
was pegging laundry and thinking simultaneously that she loved the
smell of line-dried linens and that at dinner the night before, Luc
had begun to talk about purchasing a gas dryer this coming
winter.

Robin was in the wading pool, playing
amid an assortment of floating pink plastic cups and saucers, and
using the kitchen strainer to make “summer tea” from the grass
clippings—enough to make pretend tea for half of China, Paulette
smiled to herself—that Robin had managed to import from the
lawn.

“
You have to ask
Mommy.”

Paulette looked up. On the other side
of the hedge that separated their properties, she could vaguely see
Alma Briggs, hands pushed inside the greenery to move it aside,
talking to Robin.

“
Miss Alma has invited me
over for lemonade and cookies,” Robin said, turning.

“
Well….”

“
Pleeease…”

“
Rob—”

“
Please, oh please? Mrs.
Myrtle made ginger snaps—”

“
Honestly. It’s no trouble
at all, Paulette—Myrtle is bringing Mother downstairs and we
thought it’d be nicer to sit out here in the shade. You come too,
if you’d like.”

“
Use the towel and dry
off, Robin. Then go on upstairs and put on your sandals and
sundress…”

“
Are you coming, too,
Mommy?”

“
Not today, honey—maybe
another time.” She smiled. “Thanks anyhow, Alma—give my best to
Myrtle and Mrs. Briggs, and don’t let Robin eat more than two
cookies.”

“
Three—”

“
Robin—”

“
Daddy says the French
love to bargain—it’s in our blood.” Robin ran careening past her
onto the driveway leading to the back porch, and Paulette shook her
head and smiled. “Don’t forget to put on your underwear, young
lady, and hang that wet bathing suit on the side of the
tub.”

*

Paulette liked the Briggs family—and
they adored Robin—but somehow today she didn’t feel like sitting on
the painted white metal glider that left waffle marks on her
thighs—even when she wore slacks or a skirt—and making small talk
with her elderly neighbors.

Miss Alma—a blue rinse lady—was in her
mid to late seventies Paulette guessed, and she was a
sharp-as-a-tack former school teacher who hadn’t missed a day of
classes in something like forty years. Myrtle Briggs was married to
Alma’s brother Howard and they sported identical shades of white
hair—when they sat together, they reminded Paulette of dandelion
fluff. She’d never gotten straight whether Howie or Alma was the
eldest, but really, all three—brother and sister and
sister-in-law—seemed like budding youths compared to the
sparse-haired matriarchal Mrs. Hannah Briggs. She was
sharp-as-a-tack, too, and she’d been born just over 100 years ago,
she always said proudly and, as Robin recited enthusiastically,
“Mrs. Briggs had been ‘just five years old at the time, and
remembered when Abraham Lincoln was shot.’”

*

Some three-quarters of an
hour later, Paulette walked around the block to retrieve Robin from
the Briggs’s yard. She pushed open the wooden privacy gate and saw
the three old women sitting on the double glider, gently pushing
against the slightly elevated iron “floor” making it rock. Robin
was curled up, her head against Mrs. Hannah Briggs’s arm and
sitting opposite Myrtle and Alma. The remains of the
lemonade—glasses, peels, an empty cookie plate, and four crumpled
dainty napkins sat on a small white wrought iron table near the
fancy glider. Myrtle and Alma were fanning themselves and, as they
pumped to rock the seats, Paulette could see they wore their
stockings rolled to just below the knee—1920s style—and they both
wore dated summer shoes—thin “tie” heels made from soft,
perforated, pink leather like the loose weaving Robin used when she
made nylon loop potholders at the village’s free summer program day
camp across the street in the park. Hannah appeared to be reading
the newspaper aloud to Robin. Robin could read after a
fashion—books like
One Fish, Two Fish, Red
Fish, Blue Fish
or
The Cat in the Hat
because she’d
memorized them, and here and there she could pick out a word and
she was
beginning
to read, but the newspaper was beyond her skills.

“
Say thank you, Robbie,
and let’s be on our way.” Paulette smiled broadly—hoping to
forestall conversation—and all three heads swiveled in her
direction. Even Mrs. Briggs turned her cataract-whited empty eyes
toward Paulette.

“
But she was just getting
to the good part,” Robin crumped.

“
Now, please, sweetie.
Daddy will be home soon and we have to get the picnic basket
packed.”

“
For the beach?” Her eyes
went as wide as the sand dollars that occasionally washed up on the
shore. The Oakland beach was free after 5 p.m. and you could stay
till dusk, but usually she and Luc didn’t let Robbie do more than
wade—there were no lifeguards on duty in the evening.

“
Yep.” More
smiles.

“
Bye, Miss Alma! Bye, Mrs.
Myrtle and thank you for the delicious cookies. Bye Mrs. Briggs—”
She flew to Paulette and grabbed her hand. “Bye-bye, and thank you
again!”

“
Such a nice, polite
little girl—and so intelligent, too.” Paulette heard one of them
say, the others assenting. All three of them had wavery voices, but
she thought it had been Mrs. Briggs—the blind old woman—who’d
spoken in praise of her daughter.

*

Paulette was packing the
last of the picnic basket and she sent Robin upstairs to dig
through the bottom of the closet and retrieve Luc’s beach sneakers
(the only place he wore that kind of casual footwear). She lowered
the green canvas awnings on the west side of the house, and began
to open windows on the north and east side to begin to let the
cooling late afternoon air circulate. The wind had died down, it
was hot again. She heard Robin drop the sneakers on the floor by
Luc’s side of the bed, and then heard her clomping down the front
stairs. The basket was done and she poured herself a cup of coffee,
then sat at the kitchen table. She heard the wooden front door bang
open, then closed; Robin came bounding into the kitchen
bearing
The Daily Item.

“
Read me the newspaper,
Mommy! Read me the paper!”

Paulette folded it in half and read:
“Mayor Thomas Iasillo—”

“
Who’s he?”

“
He’s the mayor of our
town.”

“
Yeah. Okay, read about
something else.”

“
Village to install
parking meters on Main Street—”

“
Isn’t there anything at
all about Indians?” Robin said.

“
Indians?”

“
When Mrs. Briggs reads me
the paper, she reads all about crossing the country in a covered
wagon. And cooking over campfires. And the time her sister nearly
got scalped by a red Indian in the Nebraska territory. And lots
more about homesteading—”

“
She does?”

“
Yes, she does,” Robin
said seriously. “I thought we got the same newspaper, but the one
that the Briggs get is completely different. How can that be, Mom?
Theirs says
Daily Item
, too. Are you sure there’s nothing—maybe in the back—about
Pawnee Indians or Hereford cows on the trail, or the time the
Carson baby was gored by a bull?”

Paulette understood at
once. Mrs. Briggs was blind of course, and she was telling Robin
stories from her youth—but
pretending
to read the paper aloud.
Now that Paulette thought about it, Alma had mentioned at some
point she’d first taught in a one room school house out west, so
maybe the stories were true.

“
You know honey, Mrs.
Briggs is a lot older than Mommy. You know that don’t
you?”

“
Sure!”

“
How do you know?”
Paulette wasn’t sure Robin—smart as she was—really had any concept
of age beyond the fact that all adults seemed grown-up
and
old.

“
Her skin when you kiss
her cheek is like leather. Yours is much softer. When will your
skin be like leather, Mommy?”

“
Not for a long time, I
hope.” Paulette was trying not to laugh, and she went on patiently.
“The thing is, Robin, sometimes when people are very old they lose
certain faculties—parts of themselves.”

“
Like what?”

“
Well, like Mrs. Briggs.
She’s lost her sight. She can’t see. We call that being blind,
Robin. Mrs. Briggs is blind.” Paulette sped on. “Mrs. Briggs is a
wonderful woman, and she’s entertaining you by telling you
stories—but they’re stories from
history
—not what’s in the daily
newspaper. Do you understand?”

Robin shrugged. “Okay, if
you say so. But she told me today I was wearing a very pretty
yellow sundress…so I guess she’s not
too
blind.”

“
I guess not, honey.”
Paulette decided that Mrs. Briggs was even sharper than she
seemed—the old lady had clearly heard Alma or Myrtle remark on the
dress and stored up that nugget of information. Like fortune
tellers—like the Provençal gypsies her own mother had told Paulette
about—doing cold readings, she thought.
No
, none of it mattered, she told
herself. The summer lemonade parties, the homemade candied apples
for Halloween, hot cocoa and peppermint sticks for Robin after
sledding in the winter. They all doted on her.
All
the Briggs family, she told
herself, were good neighbors.

West Chester, New York:
Autumn 1961

“
Mommy!! What am I going
to be this year?” Truth be told, Robin was such a small kid that
Paulette guessed she probably hadn’t outgrown last year’s pumpkin
costume. At the most, she thought, she’d have to spring for a new
pair of orange tights at Woolworth’s.

“
Pumpkin? It’s a great
costume—” Which it was—Paulette’s mother, Estelle, had made it and
she had a creative gift when it came to sewing.

“
Sister Mary Frances says
we
have
to be a
saint,” Robin said in going-on-six fashion: part announcement, part
whine.