Promise Me A Rainbow (6 page)

“I know. Now finish your chocolate and go call them.”

Fritz dutifully took a last swallow of her chocolate and stood up.

“The telephone’s over there,” Ms. Holben said.

“Maybe I can’t reach it,” Fritz suggested in desperation.

“Maybe you can stand on the stool right in front of it.”

Fritz took a deep breath. She was going to have to call Della and Charlie. There was no way out of it. She climbed up on the stool and dialed the number. The line was busy.

“It’s busy,” she said, holding the receiver out in case Ms. Holben didn’t believe her and wanted to listen. “Della has a lot of boyfriends.”

“Try one more time,” she said, but she didn’t come to listen to the busy signal.

Fritz dialed again. “Still busy.” She climbed down from the stool. “I can go get on the bus. That’s how I got here.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do that. Let’s don’t give me nightmares about your riding on the bus by yourself at this time of night, all right?”

Fritz looked at the windows. It
was
dark, and it was still raining. “All right,” she said agreeably. She didn’t want to give Ms. Holben nightmares, and she liked it here.

Ms. Holben ran the sink full of hot water and squirted in some dish detergent so she could wash the mugs and the pan they’d used to make the hot chocolate. “Who looks after you when Joe’s working?”

Fritz brought the spoons to the sink. “Della.”

“Della,” Ms. Holben repeated. “How old is Della?”

“Sixteen. She can drive a car. Charlie’s fifteen. He likes computers.”

“And what does Della like?”

“Being a cheerleader, and dancing classes and boys and parties. And new clothes that cost too much. What do you like?”

“What do I like?” Ms. Holben stopped washing. “Oh, old ghost movies with Abbott and Costello or Topper or the Dead End Kids . . . and popcorn . . . and gnomes.”

“And hot chocolate,” Fritz supplied.

“And hot chocolate,” Ms. Holben agreed.

“And Blue Willow stuff.”

“That, too. Go call.”

“I was hoping you’d forget.”

“Not a chance. Go call.”

Fritz dialed the number again, and this time Della answered.

“This is Fritz,” was all she managed. She had known Della would be mad—if she’d missed her yet—so she was prepared. She waited until Della wound down.

“The Mayfair with Ms. Holben,” she said in answer to Della’s yelling. “Apartment 3-A.” She waited in case Della had more to say, then hung up the phone. I’m supposed to wait here,” she told Ms. Holben.

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“Ms. Holben?”

“What, Fritz?”

“Could I hold Daisy and Eric until she gets here?”

“Yes, Fritz. Take them into the living room.”

Fritz carried them back to the couch, making herself comfortable and covering her legs with the afghan again. She wasn’t cold now; she just liked the pink crocheted flowers. She held Daisy and Eric carefully, turning them around and around to see their faces from different angles, to touch the daisies and acorns and to find the coin. Ms. Holben stayed in the kitchen, coming out only when someone knocked on the door. Fritz sighed. From the sound of the knock Della must be really mad.

But it wasn’t Della. It was Joe. And from the look of him he hadn’t been working. Fritz wondered how grown-ups knew these things about each other, that Ms. Holben wouldn’t understand about the business card, and that Joe wouldn’t be working if he thought she was lost. He said a few words to Ms. Holben, then came into the living room. She put Daisy and Eric carefully into the newspaper and back into the box before she got up.

“Get your coat,” Joe said, his voice making her want to shiver worse than being out in the rain ever had. He was tired and dirty and he smelled like sweat. She wished he smelled better here in Ms. Holben’s apartment.

“I gave Catherine the card,” she told him, using Ms. Holben’s first name so he would know that her visit had gone well.

“I don’t care about the card! Get your coat!”

Ms. Holben was holding the yellow poncho. Fritz walked across the room, and she let Ms. Holben help her put it on.

“Good-bye, Fritz,” she said. “I enjoyed our visit.”

“Good-bye, Catherine.” Fritz knew she should say thank you for the hot chocolate, but she didn’t trust herself to do it. She tried never to have Joe mad at her, and his anger was a lot harder to bear than she remembered.

“I’m going to put the card on the bulletin board by the telephone. Come and see me again—when you have permission.”

“There’s not much chance of that,” Joe said.

“I really would like for her to visit again if she—”

“What you would like doesn’t count for shit,” Joe said, and Fritz cringed. He jerked open the door and she went out ahead of him, looking back at Ms. Holben once when she reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs.

“Ms. Holben,” Sasha said again, because Catherine’s attention had already wandered. Catherine couldn’t stop thinking about another child today, about Fritz D’Amaro.

I call him Joe so he won’t die . . .

She kept thinking about the look that Fritz had given her at the bottom of the stairs, as if it were she, Catherine, who needed reassurance.

Don’t worry. He’s not like Koong-Shee’s father . . .

“Are we eating outside today, Ms. Holben? It ain’t raining.”

She forced her attention back to Sasha. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah! It’s like a picnic! Beatrice’s got her radio—she won’t play it too loud and get all them office women upset, will you, Beatrice?”

“Who, me?” Beatrice said innocently.

Catherine smiled. Beatrice Delcambre’s radio had only two alternatives: off and loud. She looked at her watch. “All right. We’ll go outside. Sasha, you go down to the refrigerator and get the lunches.”

“By myself?” she asked, alarmed. The building’s only refrigerator was in the front office, and Sasha was afraid of the long, dark hallway she had to walk down to get there.

“Take Abby with you.”

“Aw, Ms. Holben, don’t send Abby,” Maria said. “If she meets somebody saying they hungry between here and that refrigerator, she’ll give away every bag she’s got.”

“No, she won’t,” Beatrice said, “because Sasha won’t let her. Will you, Sasha?”

“No, Beatrice,” Sasha said, more than pleased at having Beatrice’s trust.

“And don’t you go eating anything out of those bags,” Beatrice added.

“No, Beatrice,” she said again.

Catherine waited until Sasha and Abby had come back with the lunches—all of them, she was happy to see—then walked with the group to the one picnic table out under the pine trees in the back schoolyard. She and her five students had been banished to a classroom in a recycled school building too old to be used for anything but administrative offices and projects like the one for pregnant students, and its dark and sagging interior hadn’t been improved by the week of rain. Catherine was glad for the chance to get outside, glad to be in the sunshine again.

“Ms. Holben, this table’s all wet! We can’t eat out here!”

“Maria, here,” Catherine said, bringing a large plastic drop cloth out of her tote bag. She’d found, too, that one couldn’t function in a sixty-year old building full of leaks and drafts and falling plaster without anticipating problems never considered by the better housed.

The weather was still cool, deceptively cool, because of yesterday’s rain. But the mid-September heat would be back, and she and the group would soon swelter in their un-air-conditioned classroom on the west side of the building. She’d managed to get permission to have one of the closer school cafeterias send bag lunches every day, but she hadn’t been able to get the class moved to the cooler, shadier side. Beggars, it seemed, couldn’t be choosers.

Catherine sat amid the rattling sandwich bags and Beatrice’s rock music, trying to keep her space on the drop cloth on top of the table, her mind again going to Fritz D’Amaro. She had a telephone number—a business number. She needed to talk to Joe D’Amaro, if he’d stand still long enough to listen. She thought that Fritz was a troubled little girl, and her father needed to know that.

“Ms. Holben, Sasha’s eating candy,” Maria informed her. Maria was partial to bib overalls—bib overalls with tank tops in warm weather, bib overalls with flannel shirts when it was cold—and she wasn’t above keeping her own supply of junk food in the bib pocket.

“I am not! I ate all my other stuff. Ms. Holben don’t care if sometimes you eat candy last, Maria. She just cares if you eat candy and nothing else, ain’t that right, Ms. Holben?”

“That’s right, Sasha.”

“Ms. Holben?”

“What, Sasha?”

“This candy ain’t bad for you, Ms. Holben. It’s got peanuts, okay?”

“That’s good, Sasha.”

“Do you think Sweet Eddie’s cute, Ms. Holben?”

“I’ve never seen the gentleman, Sasha,” Catherine had to confess.

“Sweet Eddie ain’t no gentleman, Ms. Holben,” Cherry said. “He’s a good-looking, sweet-talking son of a gun, but he ain’t no . . . uh-oh, Ms. Holben!”