Читать книгу The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection - Torey Hayden, Torey Hayden - Страница 20

At home, I rummaged through the things I had accumulated from the class, which I had used to write the book, looking for things to take with me on my next visit to see Sheila. The vast majority of the materials were just school papers and anecdotal records, neither very useful for the purpose. What I really wanted to share were the videotapes, but this was in the era of the old reel-to-reel videotapes and the only machine I had for playing them on was at the clinic; so those would have to wait for the time when Sheila came in to visit me. In the end, I resorted to going through my picture album.

I had surprisingly few photographs of that year. There was the class picture, all of us lined up against the blue curtain on the school stage, looking like felons in a group mug shot. The camera had caught Sheila full on, washing out her pale features. She wouldn’t smile on demand in those days, so she had just a blank stare. Unfortunately, several others in the class had been equally uncooperative and many of them were consequently rendered unrecognizable.

In total, I had only three other photographs of Sheila and these included the individual school picture, taken at the same time as the group photo. I had kept this one, as her father had declined to buy it. It was the only one I’d ever had of her smiling. Normally, she’d simply refused to smile for cameras, but on this occasion, the photographer had tricked her into it while trying to get her to grab his pen. Taken only a short time after she had arrived in our classroom, it caught her full grubby glory and I adored it.

The other two photographs I had taken myself. One was to commemorate the first time I’d really gotten her cleaned up and she sat in deep solemnity on the school steps, hands clasped upon her knees. Her hair was combed smooth and put into pigtails; her clothes were washed; her face was cleaned; and the truth was, it didn’t look like Sheila at all. She was not nearly so engaging as the filthy character in the school photograph. The other picture I had taken on the last day of school when the class had gone down to the park for our end-of-school picnic. I had taken several photographs that day, but unfortunately, Sheila was in only one of them. She was standing beside the duck pond with two of the other little girls in the class. Both of them were neat and clean and beaming cheerfully, but Sheila, in the middle, stared back at the camera with a guarded, almost suspicious gaze. Despite the new orange sunsuit her father had bought for the occasion, she had come to school very scruffy that day, her long hair uncombed, her face unwashed, and she stood in stark contrast to her two classmates. There was a compelling aspect to the photograph, however. It was the wariness of her expression, which made her seem fierce and yet surprisingly vulnerable.

I decided in the end to take that photograph, as well as the others taken on that day, which showed the other children, Anton and Whitney.

The following Saturday, Sheila and I went to watch her father’s baseball team play. They were an inauspicious-looking group, those boys. Grubby ten- and eleven-year-olds dressed in mismatched uniforms, they were almost all minority kids from a mixture of backgrounds, united, I suspect, only by their poverty. But they were noisy and cheerful in the way of all children, and they greeted Sheila’s father like a returning champion when he ran out onto the baseball diamond.

From all I could gather, Mr. Renstad appeared to be doing well. He was enormously proud of the small duplex where they lived. It wasn’t large; it wasn’t in a particularly good part of town, and he didn’t own it, of course; but he had chosen it himself, rather than have it foisted upon him by Social Services. Moreover, he was paying the rent himself out of the steady salary he now earned as a laborer for the parks department. He had taken me right through the duplex, showing me each and every thing he had managed to buy—the beds, the sofa, the television, the kitchen table. He certainly remembered the circumstances in which we had last met, and he was enthusiastic to show me how far he had come in the interim. These things were his and I could tell acquiring them meant a lot to him.

His real love, however, was the baseball team—“his boys.” Again and again, he told me how it was they who had made him go straight for good. They depended on him, he said. The team had nearly been disbanded for lack of a coach until he took over. More to the point, he admitted, he would lose them if he messed with drugs again. He was still under the watchful eye of the parole officer.

I enjoyed that baseball game. They didn’t win, but they played well and it was apparent that winning wasn’t so important to them. They were a team, in the true sense of the word, and I identified immediately with that. Whatever his past, Mr. Renstad’s present was going well.

I’d made plans to take Sheila out after the game. On the other two occasions I’d come to her house, so I thought it would be pleasant to go somewhere with her. Sheila, however, was unable to decide where she wanted to go.

I suggested we go for a pizza. I thought I might take her up to the city, partly to give her a change of scenery, and partly because there were nicer places to eat up there. So after the game, we got into the car and headed north.

Somewhere within the first five miles, I took a wrong turn. As I was still learning my way around this new area, this wasn’t unusual; however, I didn’t realize I’d done it until the thinning houses made me suspicious that I was not going toward the city. Normally I have an excellent sense of direction, and while I do take wrong turns, even then I can usually discern if I’m going in the right general direction. On this occasion, I managed to get myself completely turned around, because while I still felt that I was going toward the city, evidence outside my window said otherwise. I voiced my concern to Sheila.

“No, you’re all right. I know exactly where you’re at. Just keep driving this way,” she said confidently. So I did.

Another fifteen minutes and I hit open country. I knew I was irredeemably lost and knew I wasn’t going to right myself without taking drastic action, probably in the form of stopping and digging out the road map. I pulled the car over into a gateway to a field.

“What are you doing?” Sheila asked in surprise.

Reaching my arm over the backseat, I groped for my road atlas.

“Looking for the map. I’m lost.”

“No, you’re not.”

“We’re lost.”

“No, we’re not. I’ve been out here millions of times.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I have,” she said. “I used to be in a children’s home near here. Just down that road over there. I know exactly where we are.”

“So, where are we then?” I asked.

“Well, here, of course.”

“But where’s here?”

Sheila looked out the window.

“Tell me. Where are we?”

“Don’t get so bitchy.”

“You don’t know either, do you?” I said. “We are lost.”

Unexpectedly, Sheila smiled. It was a beguiling smile. “I’m always lost,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

I tugged the atlas over into the front seat and opened it. Locating us on the map, I discovered where I had turned wrong and figured out what I would need to do when eventually we headed back to Broadview. “Okay. I’m happy now,” I said, closing the book. I started the engine.

“You’re really a control freak, aren’t you?” Sheila said. “I never realized that about you before.”

“Not really. It’s just I feel uncomfortable when I’m disoriented.”

“Ah, not only a control freak, a defensive control freak.”

If she wanted to go in this direction, I thought, well and good, we’d go. So we took off down a minor highway in a direction I’d never been before. The better part of an hour raced past, along with the scenery.

It was a pleasant drive. Sheila talked, launching into a most amazing conversation about Julius Caesar. She had read his account of the Gallic wars in Latin class and this caught her fancy, particularly his descriptions of the native Celts in Gaul. I had done Caesar myself when I had taken Latin in high school, but in those days I had been more interested to see if I could get good grades without having to read the assignments, rather than find out what the books actually said. Consequently, I had emerged from school clever but culturally illiterate and had spent most of my adult life catching up. I hadn’t managed to work myself around to Caesar yet in Latin or English, so for most of the conversation I just listened, which was probably no bad thing.

Passing through a small town, Sheila spotted a bowling alley. “Oh, look, there! Could we stop and play a game? I love bowling.”

So we went in and had three games. Afterward, I bought us Cokes in the bar. “What about pizza?” Sheila asked. “You said we could get pizza.”

“I’m thinking we might be better going back toward Broadview. We’re quite a ways out and it’s going to take a good hour and a half to get back. I’d probably find my way back better if it weren’t pitch dark.”

“God, Torey, do you get lost a lot or something? You are really hung up on it.”

“I’m driving, that’s why.”

“So, relax. We’re okay. And let’s eat around here. It’s late and I’m starving.”

“I haven’t seen a pizza place,” I replied.

“Well, let’s just keep driving.”

I was hungry too and finding myself in a not particularly good mood. The day wasn’t working out quite as I had planned. We had wandered from one thing to another, with none of it being very special. I became aware of wanting to impress Sheila. I wanted to win her over.

“There! There!” Sheila called out, interrupting my thoughts. “There’s a pizza place.”

Sure enough, there was. And like the rest of the day, it was nothing special. I thought of the old days and how my boyfriend Chad and I had taken Sheila out for her very first pizza after the hearing that had kept Sheila out of the state hospital. The place we went into now had none of the jazz-piano atmosphere of that pizzeria; this was just a branch of one of the faceless pizza chains found everywhere.

Too hungry to care, I stopped there and we went in. Placing our order at the counter, we then located a quiet table in the corner. Sheila pulled off her baseball cap, letting her long, crinkled orange hair spill down over her shoulders, and she sat down.

“I thought you might like to see some pictures from our class,” I said, opening my handbag, “so I dug some out.”

“Like, cool. Let’s see.”

“They’re from that picnic we had on the last day. We went over to the park. Do you remember that park? It had that duck pond and the little stream.”

Taking the photographs from me, Sheila bent over them, studying the faces. “Who’s this kid?”

“Emilio.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he handicapped?”

“He’s blind,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, the blind one. What did you call him in the book?”

“Guillermo.”

“Oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about now.”

Tongue protruding slightly between her lips, Sheila remained intent on the photos. “I think I remember that park,” she said slowly. “Did it have trees that bloomed or something? They had a really sweet scent? Because I seem to remember that.”

“Yes. The locust trees.”

“Who are these girls?” she asked, handing over one of the pictures.

“Don’t you recognize her? In the middle? That’s you. That’s Sarah and that’s Tyler, but that there is you.”

“Really? God, is that me? Shit.” She craned forward to study it more closely in the dim light. “Shit. Did I really look like that?” She looked up in amazement. “My dad doesn’t have any pictures of me when I was little …”

My heart sank. She didn’t even remember herself. Watching her as she bent back over the photos, I felt so lonely. What was I doing here with this punky-looking adolescent? This wasn’t Sheila. This was just some kid.

The pizza came just in time. We had ordered a huge one, loaded with everything save the proverbial kitchen sink, and we both tucked in enthusiastically. For several moments our attention was focused on the food.

“I’ve had so much fun today,” Sheila said as she maneuvered most of a full slice of pizza into her mouth. “You know, I think it’s brilliant that you live so close by now.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

“It’s just like the old times, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, probably not too convincingly.

Sheila’s expression grew rather sheepish. “I’m sorry I don’t remember more about when I was in your class.”

“Well, you were little.”

“Yeah, but I can tell I’m, like, a real disappointment to you.”

“Of course not!” I said a little too heartily. “You were very young when we were last together and nobody remembers much from that age.”

“But you want me to, don’t you?”

“Yes, if I’m honest, I suppose I do, but just because it was a meaningful year for me and it was you who made it meaningful.”

This disarmed her. She smiled. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You liked working with little kids, didn’t you?” she said.

I nodded. “I still do.”

“It showed.”

Silence came then and we went back to our food. Then Sheila looked up.

“Can I ask you something, Tor? It’s from the book.”

“All right.”

“How come you didn’t marry that guy Chad?” she asked.

“I was too young. I wasn’t ready,” I said. “If I had, it wouldn’t have worked out.”

Pensive over her pizza, Sheila picked at it, ferreting out the olives and eating them with her fingers. “Too bad,” she said. “It would have made for a brilliant ending to your book.”

“Probably, but this was real life.”

“Real life never follows the script, that’s the problem,” she replied. “You and him getting married and adopting the little girl. That’s how every single person who reads it is going to want it to come out.”

“Yes, I know, but it isn’t how it did come out.”

“Yeah, I know.” She smiled faintly. “But you know, his eldest daughter? The one called Sheila? Well, that’s right. She should be called Sheila, but by rights, she should have been me.”