Page 9 of Spring's Arcana
Letting her imagination run away with her yet again today was the absolute last straw—but it hadn’t quiterun awaywith her, had it? She knew what she saw, even if Mom and the rest of the world didn’t care. “She wants me to find something for her.”
Uncle Leo stopped again. He took a deep breath, and for a moment Nat was entirely, dismally sure this time his temper would snap. He’d never lost it once during her life, but Mom told stories of things he’d done before.
Some of the stories were fanciful, like juggling red-hot horseshoes or outrunning a steam train, but others were just plausible enough to terrify child-Nat. Sometimes, when Leo picked her up and spun her over his head, she would shriek with joy—but every once in a while she’d stiffen and cry.
Poor Leo always looked sad when she did.I left my temper in the old country,he said each time, and would take her for ice cream if they could get out the door without Mom sighing about the costof double cones or about some home maintenance needing doing instead of catering to a little girl’s whims.
“So I need to go ask Mom a few questions tomorrow; she has something this de Winter woman wants,” Nat continued carefully. Her coat dripped yet more melted snow, but at least her fingers were waking up with painful tingles. “And then, de Winter said she’d help.”
“Help with what?” Leo coughed again, as if he wanted to curse but knew Mom would overhear. “Help your mama die, eh?”
He’d never said it quite so directly before. Neither, for that matter, had Nat. It was alwayswhen she gets better, when things calm down.
“Maybe help with hospital bills, so we’re not homeless when it happens.” Nat dropped her gaze to the clear plastic covering the table’s intricate lace cloth. She didn’t know what the tax situation with the house was, but it couldn’t be good. Her uncle was too old to work, and Nat… well.
You don’t need college, Natchenka. Don’t worry about it. Most mothers were the exact opposite; they shoved their kids schoolward with single-minded intensity.
Of course, most mothers also didn’t live in tiny yellow houses with listing picket fences and bright rioting gardens, or make an uncle drive them around like a chauffeur in an old black movie-grade Léon-Bollée, or boil strange stinking concoctions on the stove late at night and take them to the flagstone patio, pouring steaming liquid while muttering in a language she didn’t want Nat to learn.Leave the old country alone.
Most mothers came to parent-teacher conferences regularly, not just when they wanted to prove a point, and they didn’t show up in long bright skirts, scarves, tons of gold jewelry, and a thick, partly fake accent either. They didn’t date your eighth-grade History teacher one whole uncomfortable summer, while strange sounds came from the biggest bedroom and your uncle stayed out of the house as much as possible.
Leo had played a lot of chess in Princo Park that year, and took second place in the unofficial fall tournament. Mr. Harrison hadvanished in September; rumors that he’d been fired ran around the school for a while but died like tomatoes after a hard frost.
Mom had been in a good mood that winter, though, and Leo came back from wherever he was sleeping—probably in the park too, worrying Nat almost to distraction. For a while it was almost like being a family again.
Almost.
“As long as I live, you are nothomeless,” Uncle Leo said, loyally. The coffeemaker began to burble, and he shuffled for the big white enamel fridge with the funny chrome decal on its front, every curve and edge more like an ancient, gas-guzzling motor vehicle than a mini Antarctica. The freezer swung open, and he retrieved a bottle only lightly traced with frost.
“That’s a nice thought,” Nat heard herself say, dully. If she unscrewed some of the bulbs, the kitchen might not be lit up like a surgical theater. She could always remember to tighten them before Mom came home, right? “Maybe this Grandmother de Winter will send me to college. So I can take care of you.”
He seemed to find that funny. At least, Leo laughed, and when he poured the coffee his liver-spotted hands—once able to cover the scalp of a tangle-haired, scab-kneed, imaginative little girl with a single warm palm—shook a little more than usual.
It wasn’t hypnosis, Nat. And not drugs, or you’d be feeling the hangover.She shuddered, her chair squeaking, and her uncle turned from the counter, holding the bottle loosely by the neck. His mouth was drawn terribly tight.
Sometimes there just wasn’t anything to say.
He stared at her, the lovely dark smell of coffee filling the kitchen with a promise of warmth and maybe even understanding married to a slight buzz of caffeine and bitterness. Her uncle’s bloodshot, faded dark eyes shone; he rubbed at his ferocious gray stubble with damp, callus-scratchy fingers. He brought two cups to the table, neither very full, and poured a glug of vodka into hers, topping off his own with a much healthier measure.
Mom would be mad. Still, it was Nat who brought the bottles home from the corner shop when he needed them; ever since shewas eleven Mrs. Lang had quietly winked at her delivery service. A lot of kids probably did that for their uncles, though maybe not with hard liquor. It was natural, if not normal.
But there was absolutely no ordinary, rational explanation for the de Winter woman, or the secretary in green. There was none for the gangster with his wide white smile and bright boot-toes, or for Mom’s muttering over bubbling pots at two in the morning, or the cancer raving and gobbling its way through Maria Drozdova’s fever-struck body. There wasespeciallyno natural explanation for being stuck to a chair until anger pried you free, or a business card that was pristine even after a month in a grubby, carried-daily purse.
But if this strangeness had a chance of saving Mom, then it was settled. She’d do it.
Nat reached for the condensation-sweating vodka bottle. She poured until her cup was just as heavy as his. “I haven’t even thought about dinner.” She’d brought home a supermarket Thanksgiving last week, she and Leo eating processed “turkey,” grainy instant potatoes, and canned cranberry sauce Mom would never in a million years allow.
She and Leo had agreed maybe Mom had the right idea, but they’d finished the mealandleftovers the next day. It was one thing to sneak some turkey in; it was quite another to waste food in the little yellow house.
“I make grilled cheese,” her uncle said, and her eyes turned hot and full again.
“Do we have bread?” Her shoulders hunched.Should have thought of that.
“Go clean up.” Leo didn’t bother to stir his coffee, just slurped from the top.
“Okay.” But she didn’t move. Her eyes watered fiercely, she was sniffing like Mrs. Mancy’s old bulldog half a block down, and her coat was heavy and sodden, prickling at cuffs and collar. After a few sips the vodka began to uncurl behind her breastbone, a delicate heat-vine, and the two of them sat, silent conspirators, until their drinks were finished.
AND THIEVES
