Tangled Webb (7 page)

So on the way home, when Kelsey sent me into the Safeway with her wallet to get some stuff for lunch, I went through her ID.

Well, I might as well have stayed honest. She practically
hasn't
any. One driver's license—Oregon—dated January of this year, and one Social Security card. Both made out—
unmysteriously—to Kelsey Morgan Blockman. But the funny part is that there wasn't anything else. No credit cards, no insurance card, no library card even—no
junk
. I mean, it's
weird
. Lots of times, when Daddy and I used to go on car trips out of town, I cleaned out his wallet for him, just for something to do. And because it always
needed
it. He'd have a whole flock of people's business cards he didn't want, and year-old stubs from shoe repair shops and the cleaner's, and all sorts of stuff he just never had got rid of.
Besides
all the stuff he needed.

I don't know, maybe men cram their wallets fuller than women do. I don't even own one, so I don't know. Maybe Alison knows.

THURSDAY, JULY 11

Daddy's bought some new life insurance—because of Kelsey and Preston. He explained it all to me last night. The policy he had before, which had Margo and me as beneficiaries, or however you spell that, started being for me alone after Margo died, and he didn't want to change that. So he bought some more. Now he's got to pay two premiums, and he said it might pinch us all a little for a while. I said I wouldn't have minded going halves with the old insurance, but he said no, he couldn't feel it would be adequate for three.

“And all three of you must be looked after,
well
looked after, if anything should happen to me,” he said.

“Oh, Daddy! What could happen to you? You aren't expecting to walk in front of a truck, are you?” I sounded cross and unreasonable. I could hear it myself. But Daddy never gets cross back at me.

He just said, “Of course not, Juni. But insurance is for problems you
don't
expect. Things do happen, whether we expect them or not.”

Well, I know that, don't I? Think of Margo. He didn't need to remind me.

He looked at me a minute and said, “What's bothering you? It won't pinch us
hard
, I didn't mean that.”

I said, “Oh, Daddy, I wouldn't care if it did, that isn't it. It's nothing.” I went over and hugged him, and added, “Don't pay any attention to me.” And I hope he doesn't. I don't know why I act that way sometimes. But I
hate
it when he talks about things happening to him.

This afternoon when Alison and I went over to the pool I told her about Kelsey's practically empty wallet.

She said, “That's
very
suspicious!”

“Suspicious?” I repeated. “Weird, yes. But I wouldn't exactly call it suspicious. Maybe she's just an ultraneat wallet keeper. Or my father's an ultraslobbish one. Is your mom's wallet fat or skinny?”

“Bursting,”
said Alison. “So is
my
father's. Isn't everybody's?”

I shrugged, since I've never noticed. I mean, it's not a thing you make a study of. I said, “Anyhow, Kelsey's driver's license and Social Security card are both in her usual name, so it must be her real one.”

“Not necessarily!” Alison told me. “A person could get a driver's license in whatever name she made up, couldn't she? Or do they ask for your birth certificate or something?”

I shrugged again, and asked, “How do you get a Social Security number?”

This time we both shrugged. We're really totally ignorant.

“I'm going to find out,” Alison said. “I'll ask my mom.”

She phoned me a little while ago and told me her mom didn't know. “She can't even remember getting her Social Security number. She says she just always
had
one. And my dad got mine. She knows she had to take an Oregon driver's test when they came here from Minnesota, but she doesn't exactly remember getting the Minnesota license in the first place.”

I guess she's totally ignorant, too. I can't ask Daddy. He might want to know why.

Alison also gave me a whole long list of stuff in her mom's wallet
besides
license and Social Security card. Three credit cards, four charge cards, two insurance cards, Triple A card, voter registration card, telephone charge card, a dentist's appointment card for last December, three shoe clerks' business cards—plus membership cards in the historical society, the art museum, the Oregon Memorial Association, the Oregon Realtors Association, the Smithsonian Institution, the Portland and Hillridge libraries, the International Wizard of Oz Club, the Bat Conservation International, and the Save the Sheep Federation. I mean, it's worse than Daddy's.

It's like people kind of collect all this stuff in their wallets just by living. Like oak trees collect moss.

Kelsey's nearly empty one
does
begin to seem sort of suspicious. It's as if she hadn't really been alive until last January. At least, as if a person named Kelsey Morgan Blockman hadn't. So where does that leave Preston “Bitsy” Blockman, I wonder?

Later

I forgot to mention something kind of funny. Today at the pool we saw a man—a real tall, real blond man—that both Alison and I are pretty sure we saw the other day at the mall.
He wasn't
at
the pool exactly, in fact he was halfway across the little park. Just sitting on a bench. And the funny part is that at the mall he was sitting on a bench, too, just about that far away—just far enough so we couldn't really tell what he looks like. And what's even funnier is that both times he was watching us. At least it seemed like it. And when we noticed him he got up real fast and walked away. Both times.

I said, “Is he following us, or what?”

And Alison said, “Hey,
sure
he is! It's Character C!” I couldn't remember about Character C, but Alison did. “ ‘Some unexpected occurrence or a new character (C) enters the picture and changes it for everybody.' ” I think she knows Elizabeth Kenilworth's whole outline by heart.

But I doubt if our tall blond man is going to enter any picture we're in. He's more likely a coincidence, and you're not supposed to have those in your plot.

SATURDAY, JULY 13

It's really summer around here by this time. It makes Preston fussy—he doesn't like heat. He woke up early from his nap today, all cross and grumpy, so I told Kelsey he could go with Alison and me to the mall—we were going mostly to cool off in the air-conditioning, ourselves. She was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen and was glad not to have him on her hands, I think. Anyway, we put his little sun-hat on him and took him along.

And guess what. We saw that tall blond man again. Only I think he's a boy—just extra lanky. He was closer this time, and not sitting on a bench, but standing with his back to us, looking in a shop window—I thought—but then I saw it was a
baby-clothes
shop. And when I looked to see what he found so fascinating, I realized I was looking right at
him
—and he at me. There was a mirror behind the display. He was staring straight at me. The next second he realized it, too, and turned and loped off down the mall as if something was after him.

I said, “Hey, Alison?” and she said, “I saw!” We gaped at each other a minute, and I guess we were both wondering whether this was really very funny or not. Funny-peculiar, maybe. Not funny-ha-ha.

Then Alison said, “Is he a man, though? Or a kid?”

“Kid.” I couldn't tell much about how old he was, in the mirror like that. But he didn't look
jelled
enough, somehow, to be a man. I just flipped out my hands, and said, “Oh, well. It's a cinch he's not going to bother us. He acts like he's scared to get within yelling distance.”

“His plans are not complete yet,” Alison told me in her creepiest voice. Then Preston began pointing at the Orange Julius place and repeating, “Ice cream, ice cream,” like a little high-pitched buzz saw, and we forgot about Character C.

It was after we'd finished our ice cream that the funny-ha-ha thing happened. There's a shoe repair place on Grover Brothers' third floor, and last week I left my practically new white sandals because the buckle had come off already. So today we went up to get them. It's easy enough to take a little stroller like Preston's on the escalator; you just roll its front wheels on and support the back wheels until you get to the top and can roll it off again—or else Alison gets on first to support the front wheels, if we're going down. She always stands on the step in front and me on the one behind, so we can stop anything going wrong.

Well, I got my shoes, told the man “no sack” so I wouldn't have to recycle it, and just tucked the unwrapped sandals into the stroller with Preston, and we started down. About halfway between the third and second floors there was this woman on the other escalator, going up. Just an ordinary woman—I only noticed her because it seemed to me she was staring right at those sandals, with this startled expression on her face. And all of a sudden she gave this gasp and cried, “Robbers!”

Can you believe it? “Robbers!” I guess she thought I
stole
the shoes—because they weren't wrapped. Well, they do still
look new. I had the repair receipt in my purse, and I would've said so, only it struck me funny to be called a robber and I started giggling. Anyway, Preston pulled off his sun-hat just then and I had to grab it quick before he could throw it off the escalator, which he can do like lightning. And by the time I looked over my shoulder for the woman, she'd got to the top and was gone.

Alison was staring after her, looking confused and asking me what she'd said, but at that point we reached the bottom and had to pay attention to getting the stroller off the escalator.

When we were clear I said, “She thought we were shoplifters! She said ‘robbers'! For all I know she'll run right around to the down side and come after us!” I was still giggling, but embarrassed too. I mean, I don't want people to think I'm
stealing
something.

“Maybe she's a store detective,” Alison said.

“Or maybe just works here.” We were standing there at the bottom of the escalator looking up, halfway expecting the woman to appear at full speed and try to arrest us or something. But only an old man and a little boy came down, so we went on down to the mall level, still watching for her and feeling unfinished about it. I mean, I wanted to show her my receipt. But neither of us had really noticed what she looked like, though we both noticed a red blouse or jacket. All I remembered distinctly was startled dark eyes and sort of heavy eyebrows.

Anyway, she never showed up, so we went on home, arguing about “robbers.” “She should've said ‘thieves' or ‘burglars,' “Alison insisted. “Robbers are
armed
. They have
guns.”

“Well, burglars don't work in broad daylight in shopping malls. She should've said ‘shoplifters.' ”

“ ‘Thieves' is shorter, when you're yelling.”

I said, “Well, I'm none of them and I've got a receipt to prove it”; and we let it go at that, and pretty soon Alison turned off at her corner.

Preston was all hot again when we got home (so was I), so Kelsey gave him a nice cool bath and now she's reading him his duckling book Daddy brought home the other night. I think I'll stroll down to the pool and take a dip before time to set the table.

Later

This is
weird
. I can't believe it. While we were having dinner I told Daddy and Kelsey what happened today—about the woman on the escalator—just to say something, tell a funny story. I thought they'd
laugh
. Well, Daddy did—threw back his head and guffawed. But Kelsey turned as white as this paper, and stared at me as if I'd just announced the end of the world.

I couldn't imagine why. I said, “It was okay, really. I had my receipt.” She didn't answer—shook her head about an inch each way but otherwise didn't move. It scared me, the way she was looking, and I said, “Kelsey? Are you okay?”

She mumbled something and tried to smile, and turned around to the high chair, pretending to wipe Preston's mouth, but Daddy had seen her face, too, and quit laughing.

He got up fast and went to her, asking if she felt all right and did she want to lie down or anything.

She said, “No, no. Of course not. I'm fine.
Really
, Charley, I'm okay.”

But all this time Preston was sort of fending her off, because he was trying to eat and she kept leaning over him dabbing at
his mouth so she could keep her back to us; and pretty soon he let out a frustrated sort of screech, which I couldn't really blame him for, and she had to give up and face us. She wasn't quite so ghastly-looking by then, but her freckles still showed like sprinkles of cinnamon on paper, and her eyes seemed too big.

Daddy said firmly, “Come on. You're going to lie down a while. D'you feel nauseated or anything?”

She started to say no again, I'm sure of it, but she changed her mind and said, “Just a little. Go ahead and eat your dinner. I'll just—” She got up and headed for the stairs.

We both watched her go. Then I half whispered to Daddy, “I'm
sorry
! I was only trying to—I mean, I thought it was
funny,
”

“It
was
funny, Juni. It wasn't what you said, this is nothing to do with that. Sure 'nuff.” He ruffled my hair and smiled at me. “She's just not feeling quite top-notch lately.”

I got this horrible, slow
sinking
inside me for a minute. I mean, Margo had just not been feeling quite top-notch that awful day, four—nearly five—years ago now. It was exactly what Daddy had said then, too. Just a little backache. A little fever. They'd make her better in the hospital. But it was meningitis. And three days later she was gone forever, from both of us.