Part 17 (2/2)

But for some reason, Delia did believe in Mrs. Bordereau's medicines. She took a bitter liquid in a spoon every morning and she had ”treatments” for her back three times a week. She paid a dollar for the medicine and another dollar every week for treatments. Veronica was surprised: Delia was careful about money and two dollars a week seemed like a lot, particularly when she couldn't understand what happened in the treatments or what was in the liquid in the brown bottle with the cork for a stopper, wrapped in white paper and a rubber band.

With Delia getting medicine from Mrs. Bordereau and Phil coming by sometimes to take Aunt Maddie to the movies, the Bordereaus and the Nolans saw quite a lot of each other, enough for Veronica to know how much they didn't like her. Except for Mrs. Bordereau, who never said a word.

For a long time she believed they had no reason to dislike her. But then something happened and she knew they had a reason and she knew exactly what it was. She had seen something; she had seen something she wasn't supposed to see.

It was the middle of the afternoon. If they wanted to do something they didn't want anyone to see, Veronica thought, they should have waited till the sun was down. Anyone could have seen what she'd seen if they'd happened to be pa.s.sing by. It was an accident that she was the one pa.s.sing.

And she didn't move away because she didn't understand what she was seeing. She knew it was Philippe Bordereau's back; she could tell by his hair and his green work s.h.i.+rt that said ”Phil” above the pocket in yellow script thread. He was pressing Aunt Maddie up against the side of the piano, the side that was like a little wall, narrow and solid; she had put her hand against it sometimes when Aunt Maddie played; she'd liked it very much that she could feel the music.

She knew it was Aunt Maddie because she could see her shoes, which always looked like Minnie Mouse shoes to Veronica. The shoes were pointy, but not pointy enough. Aunt Maddie had heavy legs and big hips. She wasn't fat, everyone said that, but she was a large woman. ”Handsome,” people said. The top of her body was smaller than the bottom half. Her feet went with the top of her body; they were too small for her legs, and although Aunt Maddie bragged about being a size five shoe, Veronica thought she shouldn't have talked about it. Sometimes it made her look down on grown-ups when she, a child, knew better than the grown-up the category of thing that should not be said.

Phil Bordereau was moving his hips in a circle, urging Aunt Maddie's back up against the piano's side. Veronica was thinking that it must have hurt Aunt Maddie; she didn't know why she was letting him go on doing it. She thought it must be a kind of kissing, although their mouths weren't joined. She could see Aunt Maddie's face (her eyes were closed) and Phil's wasn't near it.

Suddenly Phil moved away from Aunt Maddie. When he did that, she could see Veronica. ”Phil,” she said and pointed.

”Jesus Christ,” Phil said and walked out the front door, letting it slam behind him.

Aunt Maddie walked past Veronica, up the stairs to her room. Veronica could see that the front of her dress was wet, as if she'd peed on herself. She couldn't imagine what Phil had done to Aunt Maddie that would make her pee. Whatever it was, she knew it was, more than anything that had happened to her, something she couldn't talk about.

She was pretty sure Phil had told Nettie about it. About what Veronica had seen. She got the idea when the two of them backed her into a corner.

”Now listen here,” they said, ”we want to talk to you. We want to say something.”

She thought it was a little foolish that they believed those sentences were different from each other, that both of them were required. It made her feel, for a second, that she didn't have to take them seriously. But they stood very close to her, and kept taking steps even closer, so she had to take little steps back if she didn't want her feet crushed. They did that until none of them could go any further because Veronica was standing with her back against the wall.

Nettie shook her finger in Veronica's face. It was very close to her eye; she had to keep blinking it was so close.

”Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” she said and then the two of them walked away. Veronica could tell they felt satisfied. As if they'd accomplished something. She wanted to tell them they'd accomplished nothing, nothing new had happened on account of what they'd done. She was never going to say anything, but it wasn't because of them, it was because of who she was and the things she'd always known. Long before she'd ever heard of them.

Delia stopped by to get Veronica. ”Come with me, partner,” she said. ”We're going to take your Aunt Maddie over to Mrs. Bordereau's for a treatment. She's been a bit under the weather.”

For a minute Veronica felt bad that Delia had asked her and not her mother. But she wanted to go too much to think about it for long. It would be interesting to go to Mrs. Bordereau's and find out what a treatment was and what it meant that Aunt Maddie was under the weather. She liked that about words, that they could hide what they meant, but not forever. In her experience you could always find out what they meant. Like when Nettie said, ”Curiosity killed the cat.” It meant they were mad at her for having seen Phil and Aunt Maddie when he did that thing to her that made her pee. It had nothing to do with cats, just as what was wrong with Aunt Maddie had nothing to do with weather. But you had to make the picture first. First you had to see a cat looking into something, then you had to see something springing out of it, maybe a bigger cat, a tiger, and jumping at its throat. Then you saw the cat dead. And you saw Aunt Maddie under a heavy, wet cloud, pressing her down, covering her almost entirely, until all you saw was her thick ankles and her little feet in their not-quite-pointy shoes.

”Ready, partner?” said Delia, pressing her foot down on the gas pedal. Her grandmother always wore only one kind of shoe, the shoe that all old ladies wore, black, with a rounded toe and a little heel and laces.

”Ready, partner,” Veronica said.

”We'll get your Aunt Maddie and be on our way.”

Aunt Maddie did not look well. She'd had a flu for weeks that Delia said ”she couldn't shake.” She was under the weather, and Veronica understood that; today was the kind of weather she most disliked, a winter morning. The sky was gun colored and the air tasted of rust. Old ice stuck to the sidewalk and the edges of the road. Delia said you had to be careful on this kind of road: you never knew when a slippery patch would come up. Maybe that was why she drove so slowly, or maybe it was because Aunt Maddie's stomach was upset.

Aunt Maddie looked heavy in her tweed coat. When she got out of the car, she took the white scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around her head, as if they were walking a long distance. But it wasn't a long distance, only a few steps up the concrete slab that led to the Bordereaus' house.

Nettie was waiting for them at the door. She'd opened it before they were halfway up the staircase.

When they were in the living room, Nettie said, ”What's the little one doing here?”

”She's keeping me company,” Delia said.

”Well that's a funny business,” said Nettie, but she was afraid to look at Delia when she said it.

”There's no funny business about anything,” Delia said, and Veronica thought this would make it impossible for Nettie to say anything back. But she was wrong.

”Suit yourself,” she said.

The living room had nothing in it but what could be used. There were no pictures, no plants, no statues, no doilies or antimaca.s.sars. The floors were wooden; there were three hooked rugs, blue and olive green. There was a wooden table without a cloth and around it four wooden chairs without cus.h.i.+ons so that Veronica thought it would be uncomfortable to sit on them even for the length of a meal. There was a TV and in front of it an olive green leather chair with a matching ha.s.sock, and another chair, covered in tweed, that looked exactly like Aunt Maddie's coat.

Mrs. Bordereau sat at the dining room table, on one of the hard chairs. But she was sitting on two pillows, so she was high up, like a bird on a perch or a queen on a throne. On the table in front of her were scissors, a clear, shallow bowl of water, cotton b.a.l.l.s, a jar half full of a greenish ointment, a saucer with a white powder, paper bags, rubber bands, a corked brown bottle.

She looked as she always did, like a doll or a very neat, very dressed-up child, and the things spread out in front of her looked like some kind of child's game. She indicated, pointing, that Nettie should take the coats. She stood up. Veronica thought it was possible that she'd become taller than Mrs. Bordereau since the last time she saw her.

Mrs. Bordereau walked into the bedroom without saying anything. Aunt Maddie followed. Then Nettie went in, carrying a rubber sheet. It was mole colored and when the door opened and then closed a sharp smell came into the room.

”I'm getting the h.e.l.l out of here,” Nettie said, putting on her coat, patting the fur collar as if it were a small animal she loved, but not too much.

Delia reached into her pocketbook and took out a pack of cards. A rubber band that was too thick, too inelastic for the cards so that they bent a bit under its pressure, went around the pack. Delia took the rubber band off the cards and hung it around her wrist. When she dealt the cards, the rubber band, which was light blue, swung in what seemed to Veronica an inconvenient way.

She and Delia played hand after hand of casino. There was no noise from the other room. The clock ticked loudly; it was only a face with no border, and it was so high on the wall that it was hard to read. Delia and Veronica said only, ”You won,” or ”I'll take that one.” Two hours pa.s.sed.

Then the bedroom door opened and they could hear the sound of weeping. Mrs. Bordereau went to the phone which was on a table near the front door. She dialed a number. She said something in French. Then she went into the bedroom and closed the door. They no longer heard the sound of weeping.

Nettie burst into the room rus.h.i.+ng, bringing the cold of the outside with her. She didn't say anything to Delia or Veronica. She went into the bedroom and closed the door. Then she was dragging Aunt Maddie, who was crying.

Delia rose up and said, ”What have you done to her?”

Nettie's look was full of hate. ”Oh, innocent,” she said. ”No time to talk about it now. We'll take her to the hospital. We'll go in my car. You sit in the back with her.”

In seconds they were all out the door, and Veronica could hear first the car starting and then the sound of it going down the street.

In a straight line, a line made by a series of red dots, some larger and some smaller, was a trail of blood that led from the bedroom to the front door. Mrs. Bordereau was on her knees, wiping the dots up with a wet cloth. She went into the bedroom and came out with a brown paper parcel tied with string which she brought into the kitchen. Then she went into the room again and came out carrying the rubber sheet. She walked into the bathroom with it and closed the door. Veronica could hear the sound of water filling up the bathtub. She heard the rubber sheet go plop into the water. Mrs. Bordereau came out, wiping her hands on the ap.r.o.n.

Then she sat down at the dining room table across from Veronica. They were both sitting the same way, with their hands folded in front of them, waiting for the next thing to happen. The clock ticked and the sounds bounced back and forth between the surfaces of the wooden floor and the hard wooden chairs.

Veronica felt herself beginning to cry. She didn't know whether she was crying because she was afraid or because she didn't know what to do. And she didn't know what she was afraid of, if she was afraid. Was it the trail of blood, the way Aunt Maddie looked? Or was it being alone with Mrs. Bordereau? She understood, finally, that not knowing what to do made her the most afraid. She wished more than anything that Delia hadn't taken her cards with her.

A rod of light slipped through the crack in the Venetian blinds and glanced off Mrs. Bordereau's gla.s.ses. This made Veronica cry afresh.

”Why do you cry for?”

When Mrs. Bordereau spoke, Veronica realized she had never heard her voice before. She had an accent. Veronica guessed it must be French, but it did not sound like movies about Paris.

Veronica shook her head.

”You mustn't cry,” said Mrs. Bordereau. ”If people see you crying dey will tink you are remorseful.”

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