Paint by Magic (23 page)

"What are you talking about?" Elsie demanded to know.

"You're too young," Homer said importantly. That set Elsie off, of course, and so Betty and I had to sit there listening to them bicker. I slid low in my chair and munched my egg salad sandwich. I still, after all that, didn't have the sketch.

Then Elsie started fretting about how she felt guilty for upsetting dear Uncle Fitzy with the lie about his muse's return. And how poor old Chess was stuck up in his bed because of his fake stomachache. And how Joanna was still out on her date with Mr. Riley.

This last comment made Betty sit up and shake some of the fuzziness out of her head. "Still out?" she asked shrilly. "
Still?
"

"It's not really been that long," I told her. "It just seems that way."

She frowned at me and went out on the front porch to see if her mother was coming. "Not a sign," she reported, coming back to finish her lunch. "How much fun can they be having? As much as we've been having, do you think?"

I'm not sure I'd call what had been happening to us
fun,
but things were sure more interesting here than they'd ever been at home.

After lunch Homer went up to slip his younger brother a sandwich. And when Mrs. Cotton sent us out to do some marketing, as she called grocery shopping, we decided the errand would go more quickly on wheels. We could see Chess watching us from his bedroom window as we strapped on those clunky metal skates (I wore Betty's old ones, the ones she was saving to hand down to Elsie). The skates fastened on to our shoes, and tightened with a funny key. Betty reached for my hand and led me down Lemon Street at top speed.

I felt wind in my face—real wind, not time-traveling wind—and it felt good. Everything suddenly felt great, in fact: the wind in my face, and Betty's hand holding miné, and the way we were clattering along and laughing hilariously and getting looks from some old people out tending their gardens.
Kids
today, you know.

At home in my neighborhood, in my time, there wouldn't have been all those people outside working. There wouldn't have been any parade of roller-skating kids, either, of course.

Homer came clattering up to Betty and me. "Hey, you two," he huffed, trying to keep up. "We need to talk about it! About what happened with Uncle Fitz and the paints—"

Betty turned around. "Will you hush up?" she demanded with a pointed look over at Elsie, racing up behind us. Betty took off her skates and marched into the shop while Homer, Elsie, and I waited outside, whirling as fast as we could around a lamppost. We went so fast I felt a wind again.

Time to fly home,
I thought wildly.

"Look!" Elsie cried. "Look up ahead!"

"Hey, is that Mama?" squawked Homer. "And Mr. Riley?"

"Hay is for horses, Homeboy," I shouted. "Can't you keep that in your thick head?" How come I felt so giddy? We watched Mr. Riley's horse and cart up ahead, just turning onto East Main Street, with Mr. Riley and Joanna high on the padded driver's bench.

I went into racing mode. I had energy to burn. I was
surging
with energy.

I skidded to a stop just before plowing into the back of the ice wagon—it was a lot harder to maneuver on metal skates than with my Rollerblades. "Hello, Mrs. Cotton!" I called. "You'll be glad to know that Chester is feeling much better. He's eaten lunch and is doing just fine. And hello, Mr. Riley!" I waved to him as if we were old chums. "I loved the swimming hole! Thanks for recommending it, sir!"

He smiled down at me a little nervously, like he couldn't quite remember who I was or how I knew his name. "Hello, old Nellie," I added to the horse. "Bye, now!"

I had so much energy, I zoomed back to the market at top speed. Betty was strapping on her skates again. She handed me the basket of food to carry, and I felt a sudden stab of sadness at the touch of her hand, and the crazy burst of energy popped like a balloon.

We skated home together, letting Elsie set the pace. Joanna was sitting on the porch with Mrs. Cotton and Chester, who shouted to us that he felt completely well again. Joanna told about her date—
outing,
she called it—with Mr. Riley. They'd gone on a long walk by the water, and he'd told her all about how he loved to fish. Then they ate lunch at the Walnut Inn—no harp player at lunchtime; only dinner, alas—and he told her all about his collection of seashells. Then they'd walked over to Mason Ice, where Mr. Riley worked, and he and Nellie had brought her home in the ice wagon.

"Did he kiss you, Mama?" asked Elsie.

"Hush, child!" exclaimed Mrs. Cotton. "That's not a thing a young girl should be asking."

"Well, did he?" pressed Betty.

Joanna's cheeks turned pink. "Mr. Riley is a gentleman," she told her daughters reprovingly. "A gentleman would never do such a thing on a first date."

"At least you admit it was a date!" said Betty.

"He did not kiss me," Joanna said firmly. "And what's more, I did not want him to." She looked around the table at each of her children. "In fact, I should prefer to kiss Nellie. Especially after he got to talking about shipping the lot of you off to boarding school. I told him nothing doing. And then I told him to bring me home. All right, my lambs?"

"Hooray!" cried Chester. And Elsie and Betty jumped up to hug her.

"I knew it!" Homer laughed his maniacal laugh. "I just knew he'd try the boarding school idea sooner or later."

So that was another mother saved today.

After dinner that night Mr. Cotton carried the card table outside again so we could catch the evening breeze while we tried to fit more pinks and purples of the presidential garden together. There was no sign of Fitzgerald Cotton, of course, and I found myself worrying about the guy. He'd had a rough day, too.

Joanna went upstairs to put Elsie and Chess to bed, and Mrs. Cotton was washing up the dinner dishes. I lay back on the porch swing and let everything sort of wash over me: The warm evening. The scent of mown grass. The clink of ice in Mr. Cotton's lemonade. Betty's grumble when the jigsaw pieces wouldn't fit. And Homer's goblin laugh.

The scents and sounds of 1926.

I didn't know these people very well, and it wasn't like I wanted to live with them forever or anything—but somehow ... somehow things were more ... interesting. More interesting than with my own family at home. Kids had adventures here, even when the stakes weren't life-or-death. Kids made plans. Kids stuck together. They went places. They let one event lead to another and another. They could just be
spontaneous.
Things were special here.

There, I'd said it.

Did that make me a traitor? I gave myself a little shake like maybe I could shake some sense into myself. I mean, really, what was I thinking of? It was BORING here. I told myself it was very,
very
boring. They lived in the previous century and were technological idiots. They didn't have even such simple things as TV or computer games. They had only the big brown radio that stood in the living room with only, like, two channels—one with rinky-tink-sounding music and one with scratchy voices reading the news: "Hurry out to your neighborhood cinedrome to see
Rin-Tin-Tin,
today's box office hit!" "Flappers swell the ranks of women voters!" "President Coolidge warns that bootlegging is a serious crime and that criminals shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law..."

"Con?" Homer pushed back his chair and came to sit next to me on the swing, interrupting my thoughts. "Aren't we gonna tell
anybody
?" He kept his voice low so Mr. Cotton wouldn't overhear.

"About
what
?" I couldn't help needling him.

"About the Smiler!" Homer cried.

"Don't," Betty said with a shudder, abandoning the puzzle and coming to sit on my other side. "Don't even mention his name."

"But what happens
now
?" pressed Homer.

"I wish I could see her again." Betty's voice was wistful. "Pammie. Just to be sure she's all right. Just to ... visit, you know, the way you've visited us here, Con. And I'd like to see what things are like where you come from.
When
you come from, I mean."

"Me, too," said Homer eagerly. "Will you tell us?"

Before I could answer, we heard the creak of the front screen door opening. "
Sssh!
" Betty warned us.

Joanna and Mrs. Cotton came out onto the porch. Mrs. Cotton lit one of the oil lamps and stood it on the puzzle table. It filled the evening with a soft yellow glow. The two women settled into rocking chairs. Mrs. Cotton worked on something she was knitting in soft green wool.

I watched her fingers moving the needles until they'd almost hypnotized me. Or was it the soft glow of the light that hypnotized me? Or Homer's rhythmic kicking his toe against the floor, sending our swing gently back and forth, back and forth?
What happens now?
Homer had asked.

I had to get that sketch and try to go home, that was what. But here on this porch with these people, the urgency I'd felt since I'd arrived had vanished. I'd known these people only a few days, but leaving wouldn't be easy—maybe because I sensed there'd be no coming back.

When Mom had been away from home a whole year, to us it was only a blink of an eye. We'd never noticed. When I went back, would anyone notice I'd been gone?

When I'd come home from school that day, and Mom was on the couch—with different clothes and different hair and ... and feeling different about everything ... Would I be different, too, if I ever got back home?

But—
I was already different.

The thought hit me hard, made me flinch, and sent the porch swing skittering. I was as different as Mom had become, and it had taken only a couple of days—not a year. I mean, I wasn't about to go home and start throwing out the TVs and stuff, but I could sort of see why Mom had. I scrubbed my fingers through my hair, hard. I could almost hear Crystal's derisive voice hissing in my ear:
Traitor!

The screen door creaked. I looked over, expecting maybe Elsie to be out of bed, trying to creep back out here with us old folks. But no—it was Fitzgerald Cotton himself poking his head out. Everyone noticed at the same time, and sat up suddenly and stopped what they were doing. Betty dropped a puzzle piece. Homer stopped rocking the swing. Mrs. Cotton's fingers on the knitting needles seemed to freeze in midair.

Mr. Cotton cleared his throat. "Fitz, my boy."

"Here, dear," Mrs. Cotton said brightly, struggling out of her rocker. "Sit down right here and let me get you something to drink!"

"Sit over here with me and Con, Uncle Fitzy," invited Homer, scooting to the corner of the swing so there would be room for the artist between us.

"You're good at puzzles, Uncle Fitzy," said Betty with a big smile. "Can you help me—"

"Joanna," Fitzgerald Cotton said slowly. His eyes raked over each of us, coming to rest on Joanna at the puzzle table.

"Fitz!" she said with a sudden glad smile, like maybe she was thinking he meant to share his lottery winnings or something.

She sat him down, acting like this was totally normal for him to be here, with his family. "How is your work going these days?"

"Not well at all, I'm afraid."

"Oh, dear, I hope the children have not been pestering you."

"Not at all," he said grandly. "They've been no trouble at all. Very helpful children, actually. For the most part. No, Joanna, my dear. It is not the children's fault I've been deprived of my muse."

"
Ahh,
" she said softly.

"Something to drink, Fitz?" asked Mrs. Cotton eagerly. "A cup of tea? Just tell me what you need."

"No tea, Mama," he said. "What I need is right here—but it isn't tea."

"Perhaps a nice sandwich?" ventured Joanna. "There's leftover meatloaf—"

"I need
you,
Joanna. Upstairs."

"Me?!"

"In the studio."

Of course,
I thought.

"How wonderful!" cried Joanna. "Will you paint me?" She pushed back her chair and stood up. She had a great big smile on her face, like maybe she'd applied for the position of New Muse and thought she was about to get the job.

He shot another look around at all of us sitting there, then walked over to me. He fished in his trouser pocket and brought out a folded sheet of white paper. "I found this yesterday—blown under the couch. It's for you, young man. Your train ticket home, perhaps?"

I took the paper and started to unfold it, not sure for - a moment what it was, because the sketch as I'd last seen it had been yellowed with age. But sure enough, it was the charcoal sketch, on paper still white. There was Mom, sitting in the grass, smiling up at me and holding out her hand. The paper seemed to pulse in my hand—blown by a strong wind.

I folded the paper closed again—quick—and looked up at him. There was suddenly a huge lump in my throat. "Thank you," I whispered.

"My pleasure," he said gently. "Seems to me you've earned it."

Then Fitzgerald Cotton held open the screen door and beckoned for Joanna. She flashed us all this big smile—quizzical, but triumphant, too, it seemed to me—and went inside. Fitzgerald Cotton looked back—straight at me—and winked.

The screen door closed softly behind them. Homer and Betty leaned toward me excitedly, wanting to see the sketch. But I held it folded on my lap.
My lifeline! My talisman!
I wasn't about to share.

"Well, Mother?" said Mr. Cotton.

"Fitz is coming back to us," replied Mrs. Cotton. She sounded all choked up. "Oh, Edgar, he's coming back."

"Now, we don't know that, Mother," Mr. Cotton said gently.

"I feel sure of it. He came downstairs! It has been ages and ages—ever since Pamela left us. Maybe now—"

"Well, it's a beginning, I'll grant you that," interrupted Mr. Cotton. "But when Fitz gets into one of his black moods, it can last months. Years! You know that."

"He came down," Mrs. Cotton said firmly. She picked up her knitting. "I say that is a very big step. And you know how he's always adored Joanna ... Maybe now..." She glanced over at Betty and Homer and me and fell silent.