The Window (6 page)

W
HEN
I
GO
to Gwen again I go to another Texas morning. This time the passage is slower, as if the wind can hardly stir. It is a passage to a morning later in that summer....

Gwen asked, "Do you want the pillowcases sprinkled, Mama?"

"Certainly."

Her mother was ironing, going piece by piece through a basket of rolled, damp linens. Linens they could no longer afford to send out.

It was early, but already the day was heating up. They were working on the screened-in side porch.

"Nobody sees pillowcases," Gwen said.

"Nobody sees your shirttails, either, but you keep them ironed."

Gwen traced a monogram with one finger. Her mother's maiden name initials. Probably embroidered before she got married, maybe even before she got engaged.

"Mama, do you miss Daddy?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"But do you?"

"Gone is gone, and there's no use crying over spilt milk."

"But, Mama ... I was wondering ... how are we going to live? I mean ... do we have any...?"

Gwen watched her mother's lips tighten into a straight line. "I will be starting work next week, Gwen. The bank has hired me to be a receptionist."

Gwen rolled the last two pillowcases together and tucked them into the bottom of the basket. "Do you want to do that?"

"
Want
doesn't come into it."

"But, Mama ... how do you feel about it?" The words rushed out. "About Daddy leaving us, and you having to go out and work, and us ... What are you going to do about us? Abe and..."

"
Feel?
" Her mother repeated the word as though she was trying out a strange sound. "
Feel
doesn't come into it, either. And you can help with the boys in the afternoons, you're big enough."

Gwen thought about Abe, who had hardly talked at all since he'd realized that their father wouldn't be coming back. She'd found what was left of his pill bug circus scattered behind an oleander bush, every toothpick broken and every tiny flag wadded up.

Gabriel seemed less affected, bicycling off most days to see his friends. Still, Gwen had occasionally caught him looking puzzled in a way that didn't seem right for a kid.

But now her mother was setting down the iron. "Oh, that dust!" she exclaimed as a car turned in the drive. "Gwen, is that that salesman again? Didn't Gabriel say he was here yesterday?"

Paul called, "Good morning," as he got out of the car. Then he opened the screen door without being asked and came onto the porch.

Gwen's mother picked up her iron. "What are you selling this time?"

"Nothing. I came to see if I could take Gwen for an ice cream."

Gwen's mother looked surprised, and then like she'd tasted something bad. "How do you know Gwen? Gwen is too young to go on a date."

"It's not a date, Mama," Gwen said. "It's for ice cream."

She ran down to the car, heard Paul following, even while he was calling back things that sounded polite.

Gwen whispered, "Let's go, before she says no."

They were out the driveway, out of sight of the porch, before Paul looked sideways, met her with a smile.

"You really want ice cream?"

I wake up cold on Monday morning, cold air blowing in on me from the window. Aunt Emma has stopped asking me why I leave it wide open at night.

"Fresh air never hurt anyone," Gabriel told her the last time she asked. "When I was in the army, we always kept windows open in the billets."

Abe said I was cleaning spiderwebs. I finally figured out he meant I was clearing cobwebs from my brain.

I wiggle further into the covers, my thoughts shifting from the kids at school to Gwen and Paul, drifting from football games to a band of woods beside a summer lake. Cobwebby woods. Nice woods, I think, although...

"Hey, lazy bones, don't you know what time it is?"

It's Uncle Gabriel, at my door. He's gotten me this talking clock that you hit and it tells you the time.

I grab for it, hear a perfectly flat, absolutely one-tone voice say, "Seven-oh-clock—oh-seven-hundred-and-fifteen-seconds."

At school Hannah is full of plans for finding out about Gwen. "Maybe I can come over to your house and go through photo albums with you," she says. "Maybe we'll find Gwen's name written on a picture."

"I've about decided to ask Aunt Emma who was in my uncles' family. See if she mentions Gwen."

"And if she doesn't?"

"I don't know. Go to Plan Two, I guess."

"Which is?"

"Hannah, I don't know. I don't have a Plan Two. Probably Aunt Emma will tell me Gwen's a retired librarian in San Antonio or Dallas and that will be that."

But now Hannah's the one who wants to be all mysterious and makes me promise we'll try to find out ourselves about Gwen before I ask. I get the idea that what she really wants is an excuse to go home with me instead of to her own home. And, of course, I should have her over since I spent the night at her house.

"OK," I say, "it's OK with me."

Hannah leaves me at the door to my gym class. "I'll be at your place about four," she says. "And Mandy ... let's not tell anybody else about Gwen. She can be, our secret?"

I try to remember if I've ever had a secret with another girl before. I don't think so.

Not that I'm sharing this one quite all the way. I don't think I want to tell Hannah about that last time, how Gwen and Paul were kissing in the car. It seems sort of .. personal.

The tardy bell startles me and I turn quickly, groping for a handle on a closed door that won't push in. I find a knob instead, pull the door open, and a second later bang my stomach against something solid.

I cautiously run my hand along it until I realize it's a sink. My shoulder hits something that clatters to the floor.

This isn't the gym.

I try to think what I know about the wall by the gym door. What's along it? Hannah hasn't said there's a girls' room. What if I've barged into a boys' bathroom? I take a panicky step and knock something else over.

Then my hand finds the stiff bristles of a brush and next to that a wet cloth. I'm in a cleaning closet.

Relief runs through me and then my cheeks go flaming hot. I back out, wondering who's seen Mandy's latest mistake.

But the hall's quiet. Maybe nobody has.

I say a little thank-you as I search for another door. I find one and open it, and this time I listen for gymnasium echoes before I go any farther.

***

After lunch Ted's waiting for me outside Ms. Zeisloff's room. I think we must look like a couple, standing there.

"You want people to see us together?" I ask. "The deaf boy reading the lips of the blind girl listening..."

"I just wanted you to know I'm not coming to class today. I'm in the middle of a project that I've got to finish before it sets, and I've got a pass to work in the art room."

"So why are you telling me?"

And as fast as I say it, I feel guilty in case I've hurt Ted's feelings, which is stupid, but I about fall over myself trying to make things right. "Ms. Z.'s will be boring without you. I didn't know you did art."

"Yeah, well..." His voice trails off.

"Mandy and Ted," Ms. Z. says, "time to get started."

Ted must show her his pass. She says, "All right," and I hear her go inside.

The path is quiet now because the period's begun. I suddenly realize this is about as good a time as I'm going to get to ask Ted to the holiday dance. I wish my hands weren't so clammy. I hope my face isn't getting blotchy red, the way it does sometimes when I'm nervous.

"Ted, the dance that's coming up ... Would you like to go?" I say, the words spilling out.

I should have said it differently. What if he doesn't understand that I'm inviting him?

I add, "With me, I mean?"

"So everyone can watch the blind girl being led around by the deaf boy who can't hear the music?" But he's laughing as he says it, a friendly laugh.

"Something like that," I answer.

For the briefest moment, Ted takes my hand, and I don't know if he's holding it or shaking it. Actually, the way he does it, so fumbling and awkward, I doubt if he knows.

Ted says, "I accept with pleasure."

I go inside and my itinerant teacher, Ms. Thorn, wants to work with me on a new set of braille exercises that Ms. Z. is generating.

"Things going OK, Mandy?" Ms. Thorn asks while we wait for the embosser to finish the page of bumps and spaces. "Did you get the math tapes we ordered?"

She goes over what I'm doing, class by class, before she says, "All right. Now, let's see how you and your braillewriter are getting along."

The brailler reminds me of an old typewriter, the kind people had before electric ones and before computers. There's just one row of keys, three on the left and three on the right, that you press to form the six dots of a braille cell. In the middle is a space bar that you work with your thumbs.

I feed in a sheet of paper and get started on today's exercise, which is a page full of words like
cap, cat, can, pan.
I'm to read them off the sheet from the embosser and then duplicate them on the braillewriter.

Grade-one braille, Ms. Thorn calls what I'm doing, working letter by letter rather than with the code for common words and letter combinations; that is grade two.

It may be called grade one, but what I'm struggling with is worse than it was learning to read print when I was six years old and really in the first grade.

"I don't know why I have to learn this stuff, anyway," I say. "I can type my work on a computer like everyone else and then just listen to it."

Ms. Thorn adjusts the way my left hand is positioned on the brailler keys. "But Mandy," she says, "how are you going to check your writing with a speech synthesizer? Or revise it? Do it letter by letter? Word by word? You won't be able to see punctuation or word spacing."

"I can't see this, either."

"You will, Mandy," Ms. Thorn says. "One day you'll be able to see braille the way I see print on a page. That's what braille does, Mandy. It lets you see."

Promises and hype, I think. I wonder how much is just sales pitch.

But Ms. Thorn doesn't sound like a salesperson, and I want to believe.

"OK," I tell her. "But I may be ancient before I get it learned."

Ms. Thorn coaches me for a while as I make
cat
and
can
with the braillewriter. Then she tells me she's going to check on Marissa and I should call if I need help.

Pan.
My fingers hover over the keys as I try to picture the dot pattern that makes the letter
p.
A is easy: one dot, top left in the braille cell. Four dots for
n
. I pull the lever to ratchet my paper up one line and go back to the exercise page.

What I find seems too wide a pattern for the domino-like braille cell. I start to call, "Ms. Thorn, there's a mistake." But then I remember about the number sign, how a backward
L
of dots changes what follows from a letter to a number. I find the backward
L
and then the single dot that it turns from
a
into
1
.

I'm pleased I figured it out, but I don't think my teachers should be throwing me trick problems that I might take for mistakes.

I hunch over the brailler and think about Ted and me. About Gwen and Paul. About that ice-cream trip that was really a drive into woods by a lake.

What have I gotten myself into?

I asked Ted. Actually asked him. And he said he'd go.

My stomach knots up. How am I going to keep from making a fool of myself? I won't fit in, not at a dance.

Except ... I like the way he took my hand.

I hear Ms. Thorn behind me, but I pretend to be so busy that I don't realize she's there. I hope it doesn't show, how mixed up I feel inside.

A
T HOME
Uncle Gabriel puts some money into my hand. Fifty dollars, he tells me, all in tens. "I figured you'd want to start Christmas shopping early the way Emma always does," he says.

I must look absolutely out of it, because he adds, "Don't forget something for your aunt. Emma's been carrying on about Christmas this year like I've never seen her before."

"She needn't carry on for me."

But Gabriel continues as if I haven't said a word. "You know, we almost had a baby once, your aunt Emma and me, a little girl that died at birth. Your being here—for your aunt it's kind of like being given the daughter she was never able to have."

I know Gabriel means well, wants to let me know I'm not just a burden. But instead he's making me miss my mother so much. Christmastime ... of all the times, that was when we were the most separate from everyone else, and it made us close. It was like we held each other up in a lonely wind.

Gabriel's still talking about Christmas presents when Hannah shows up. He says, "Maybe you girls can go shopping together."

Hannah says, "Sure. It'll be fun."

When we're alone, though, I say, "I don't need your help, Hannah. I can pick things out without help."

"Mandy," she says, "I know you can, but how are you going to get to the stores? Walk ten miles? Are you ready to find your way around by yourself?"