Raymie Nightingale (10 page)

“That’s all of us, though, Granny, isn’t it?” said Louisiana over the noise of the rain. “Aren’t we all brokenhearted?”

The ride back to town was not fast. They still did not bother to stop for stop signs, but they went past them slowly. And there was no singing. Beverly sat with her arms crossed over her chest, Louisiana looked out the window, and Raymie stared down at
A Bright and Shining Path: The Life of Florence Nightingale
and flexed her toes. But she didn’t really know what her objectives were anymore.

She was too sad for objectives.

“Don’t forget,” said Louisiana when Raymie got out of the car. “We succeeded, but there’s another wrong that still needs to be righted.”

Raymie looked down at the book in her hand.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday, at Ida Nee’s.”

“Yes, you will,” said Louisiana. “The Rancheros will ride again. I promise you.”

Beverly sat very still, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t look at Raymie. She didn’t say anything at all.

Raymie closed the door to the station wagon as quietly as she could and climbed the front steps to her house. Before she went inside, she turned and watched the car go up the street. There was black smoke pouring out of the exhaust pipe. Raymie stared at the smoke, willing it to shape itself into something that had meaning — a letter, a promise. She stared until the car disappeared.

“Where in the world have you been?” said her mother. She was holding open the front door. Behind her was the bookcase, filled with all of Raymie’s father’s books, and behind that was the yellow expanse of the shag carpet, which seemed to go on forever.

“I was —” said Raymie. “I was, um, reading to the elderly.”

“Come inside,” said her mother. “Something has happened.”

“What?” said Raymie. “What happened?” She felt her soul form itself into a small, frightened ball.

“Mrs. Borkowski,” said her mother.

“Mrs. Borkowski,” repeated Raymie.

She held Florence Nightingale very close to her chest, as if the lady with the lamp could protect her from whatever it was that her mother was getting ready to say.

“Mrs. Borkowski is dead.”

Raymie stared at the yellow carpet. She stared at the bookcase. She couldn’t look at her mother’s face. She felt, more than anything else, bewildered. How could Mrs. Borkowski be dead?

“There’s no funeral,” said her mother. “But there will be a memorial service tomorrow at the Finch Auditorium. Mrs. Borkowski’s daughter is taking care of things, and that’s what she said her mother wanted: a memorial service, no funeral. Who knows why.” Raymie’s mother sighed. “Mrs. Borkowski was always so strange.”

“But how can she be dead?” said Raymie.

“She was old,” said Raymie’s mother. “She had a heart attack.”

“Oh.”

Raymie went into the kitchen. She picked up the phone and called Clarke Family Insurance. The phone rang. Raymie looked up at the sunburst clock on the kitchen wall. The clock said that it was 5:15. Sometimes Mrs. Sylvester stayed late on Saturdays, typing things up.

The phone rang again.

“Please,” said Raymie. She tried to flex her toes. But her feet were frozen, numb. Her toes wouldn’t move at all.

Mr. Staphopoulos had never said what you should do if you
couldn’t
flex your toes.

The phone rang a third time.

Mrs. Borkowski was dead!

“Clarke Family Insurance,” said Mrs. Sylvester in her cartoon-bird voice. “How may we protect you?”

Raymie said nothing.

“Hello?” said Mrs. Sylvester.

Raymie couldn’t speak.

“Is this Raymie Clarke?” asked Mrs. Sylvester.

Raymie stood in the kitchen and nodded her head. She held on to the phone and stared at the sunburst clock and thought about Mrs. Sylvester’s gigantic jar of candy corn. It was so bright. It was as if it held light instead of candy corn. It was a very comforting thing to think about — a jar filled with light.

“I —” said Raymie. But she couldn’t get any further than that. The sentence she needed to say was jammed up inside of her. Maybe the words were somewhere in her toes? Also, her soul felt incredibly small. She wasn’t even sure where it was. She searched around inside of herself, trying to locate it.

“There, there,” said Mrs. Sylvester.

“Um,” said Raymie.

“He’ll come back, honey,” said Mrs. Sylvester.

Raymie realized that Mrs. Sylvester thought that she was upset about her father leaving.

Mrs. Sylvester didn’t know that Mrs. Borkowski was dead.

Something about this made Raymie’s soul even smaller and her toes even stiffer. It occurred to her that nobody really knew what anybody else was upset about, and that seemed like a terrible thing.

She missed Louisiana. She missed Beverly Tapinski.

She had another terrible thought: Where had Mrs. Borkowski’s soul gone?

Where was it?

Raymie closed her eyes and saw a gigantic seabird fly by: its wings were massive — huge and dark. They didn’t look like angel wings at all.

“Mrs. Borkowski?” she whispered.

“What’s that, honey?” said Mrs. Sylvester.

“Mrs. Borkowski,” said Raymie, louder.

“I don’t know who Mrs. Borkowski is, dear,” said Mrs. Sylvester. “This is Mrs. Sylvester. And everything is going to be fine, just fine.”

“Okay,” said Raymie.

Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

Mrs. Borkowski was dead.

Mrs. Borkowski was dead!

Phhhhtttt.

Raymie’s mother did not talk on the way to the memorial service. She sat behind the wheel of the car exactly the same way she sat on the couch, staring straight ahead, grim-faced.

The sun was shining very brightly, but the whole world looked gray, as if everything had faded overnight.

They drove past Central Florida Tire. There was a gigantic banner in the window of the store that said, “YOU could become Little Miss Central Florida Tire 1975!”

Raymie read the words and was alarmed to discover that they didn’t make any sense to her.

Become Little Miss Central Florida Tire? What did that mean? The words promised her nothing.

Raymie looked down at Florence Nightingale. She had brought the book with her because it hadn’t seemed like a good idea to leave it behind.

“What’s with the book?” said her mother, still staring straight ahead.

“It’s a library book,” said Raymie.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s about Florence Nightingale. She was a nurse. She walked a bright and shining path.”

“Good for her.”

Raymie looked down at the book. She stared at Florence Nightingale’s lamp. She was holding it up high over her head. It almost looked like she was carrying a star.

“Do you think that if you were in a deep hole in the ground and it was daylight and you looked up out of the deep hole, at the sky, you could see stars, even though it was daylight and the sun was out?”

“What?” said her mother. “No. What are you talking about?”

Raymie didn’t know if she believed it either, but she wanted to believe it. She wanted it to be true.

“Never mind,” she said to her mother. And they drove the rest of the way to the Finch Auditorium in silence.

The Finch Auditorium floor was composed of green and white tiles. For as long as she could remember, Raymie had walked only on the green tiles. Someone had told her that stepping on the white ones was bad luck. Who? She couldn’t remember.

There was a stage at the front of the auditorium. The stage had a piano on it and red velvet curtains that were always open. Raymie had never seen the curtains closed.

In the center of the auditorium, there was a long table. The table was covered in food, and there were people standing around it talking.

Raymie kept her right foot on a green square and her left foot on a green square and held herself very still. An adult passed by and patted her on the head.

Someone said, “I think it’s mayonnaise, but I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell at these things.”

Someone else said, “She was a very
interesting
woman.”

Somebody laughed. And Raymie realized that she would never hear Mrs. Borkowski laugh again.

Raymie’s father had always said that Mrs. Borkowski’s laugh sounded like a horse in distress. But Raymie liked it. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski threw back her head and opened her mouth wide and whinnied when something was funny. She liked how you could see all of her teeth when she laughed. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski smelled like mothballs. She liked how Mrs. Borkowski said “Phhhhtttt.” She liked how she talked about people’s souls. Nobody else Raymie had ever met talked about souls.

Raymie’s mother was standing next to someone who was holding a shiny black purse close to her chest. Her mother was talking, and the woman with the shiny black purse was nodding at everything her mother said.

Raymie wanted to hear Mrs. Borkowski laugh.

She wanted to hear her say “Phhhhtttt.”

Raymie didn’t think that she had ever felt so lonely in her life. And then she heard someone say, “Oh, my goodness.”

Raymie turned and there was Louisiana Elefante. And next to Louisiana was Louisiana’s grandmother, who was wearing a fur coat even though it was summertime.

Louisiana’s grandmother had a tissue in her hand, and she waved it back and forth in front of her face and said to no one in particular, “I am positively prostrate with grief.”

“I’m prostrate with grief, too,” said Louisiana. She was staring at the table full of food.

Both Louisiana and her grandmother had lots of bunny barrettes in their hair.

Louisiana.

Louisiana Elefante.

Raymie had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. “Louisiana,” she whispered.

“Raymie!” shouted Louisiana. She smiled a very big smile and opened her arms wide, and Raymie walked toward her, stepping on both white tiles and green tiles. She didn’t care anymore. She stepped on all the tiles because bad things happened all the time, no matter what color tile you stepped on.

Louisiana put her arms around Raymie.

Raymie let go of Florence Nightingale. The book hit the floor and made a sound like someone clapping their hands together.

Raymie started to cry. “Mrs. Borkowski is dead,” she said. “Mrs. Borkowski is dead.”