The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane (19 page)

“I am taking it myself. Didn't I get better? So the proof you say is in the putting.”

“Pudding,” I said, distractedly. “You can leave it on the table, if you want. It's very kind.”

“No, I give it to you now. A dose now. A dose later in the night if you neet it. But only if you neet it and only at night. I have not much left and it's to make you sleep. I was given six bottles, but I haf neet for it as well. My friend Sophie, she makes it in the shtetl. A Polish meticine.”

“Well…” I couldn't think. What difference did it make anyway? At worst, it would kill me, and I'd been thinking about that anyway. Maybe, too, my mother had someone send this strange woman to me. Maybe I was meant to be killed here in the middle of the night by Mrs. Mendelbaum so I could join my mother. So I took a spoonful of the black goo that Mrs. Mendelbaum held out to me, and Mrs. Mendelbaum then wiped the spoon on the back of her bathrobe. In my daze I wondered if that's how the bathrobe had gotten so black. How many times had Mrs. Mendelbaum taken the medicine and wiped the spoon just so? She would have had to drink an awful lot of it.

“Goot, goot. You rest now. You sleep, my little angel. I hat angels of my own once.” And the way Mrs. Mendelbaum said it, I began to cry because I knew Mrs. Mendelbaum was not giving the medicine to me, now. She was giving it to her own children. She was giving it to them fruitlessly, as if this loving act could bring her back into time with them. It was her own children she was trying to make well and bring back. Over and over and over.

I sat for a second in bed looking at the wall. Mrs. Mendelbaum had placed the medicine bottle on my night table and left. Then what did I begin to smell? Wet earth. Overheated dense air, full of life, the thick mists of the jungle. I was vaguely aware that this was not just the fever. It was some drugged response to the cough medicine, and I felt both heavily sleepy and sharply awake somewhere else. I heard the brushing of the large, heavy fronds against the window and the clickety clackety clack of the train wheels, like large hooves, trotting over the old tracks. Clickety clack through the jungle, clickety clickety clack. Oh no, I murmured feverishly, because suddenly I knew what was coming next. Then I felt it, my mother's hand on my shoulder, patting it and saying, It won't be long now, Jocelyn dear, and we'll be there. I sighed and leaned into my mother's soft body and smelled the faint whiff of her carnation talc and the faint powdery tang of her deodorant. I settled there and turned my head slightly to gaze out the window at the jungle. Every so often there would be a clearing and I would see a village or a fire, women washing clothes in a river, their feet splayed against the tiny pebbles of the riverbed, their knees apart slightly wider than their feet, their perfect balance, perched over the rocks, and the slap wring slap wring of the clothes, accepting and unhurried in this task. It was the rhythm of their lives while my life and what was to be moved hurriedly on down the tracks.

 

MELINE

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I came into Jocelyn's bedroom very pleased with myself. “Wake up,” I said as Jocelyn stared at me. She had hair matted on her head and some stuck to the corner of her mouth with dried drool and something black and brackish. She really looked as if she'd been fished out of a swamp.

“Whah? I'm sick. Go 'way,” said Jocelyn.

“You won't want me to leave when you've heard what I've found,” I said.

“Will too, guarantee it, go 'way,” said Jocelyn, squeezing her eyes even more tightly closed as if there were a chance this would get rid of me.

“Oh, stop it and WAKE UP!” I barked. “You're not
that
sick. You're not even as sick as I was. The doctor said so.”

“Fever,” said Jocelyn. “Flu.”

“Jocelyn, PAY ATTENTION. I … found … a … COCK … PIT!” I figured if she cared about our plan at all, this would excite her.

“Don't care,” said Jocelyn. “Don't care. Don't care at all.” And this time she put the pillow over her head and held it there and refused to make any kind of response to my fervent pokes, even to defend herself.

“Oh, all right. You're of no use when you're sick, Jocelyn. I'll tell you that much. You're really of no use at all.” I crashed downstairs and paced around. Now that I was feeling better I didn't know what to do with myself. If Jocelyn had been well we could have begun piecing plane parts together, but it wasn't something I could do by myself. Or we could drag the cockpit into the barn or at least try to. We might still need the dolly for that. I couldn't believe we had come so far and Jocelyn was just lying feverishly around pretending not to care. The cockpit was such an important discovery. I supposed I could get into it and check out the instrument panel, surely Uncle must have been wrong about the planes being stripped of
all
the instruments. After all, he didn't know planes and the story was hearsay anyway. I was dying to get a good look but afraid that it would roll over and things would be further smashed. I wanted to secure it before I got in. Right now it was wedged at a bad angle between some logs.

I decided finally to make a list of things I could do, which would at least give me the illusion that I was doing something. I was sitting on a chair by the fire when Humdinger passed right behind me. I felt him more than saw him. I certainly didn't hear him. I waited expectantly, but no mint. I suspected it might be because I wasn't waifishly pretty like Jocelyn. It was my observation that the waifishly pretty girls of the world got everything, including sympathy, it seemed, and mints, and that if you were ugly you always had to prove that you didn't have an ugly personality to match and so one must develop charm and an easy pleasant interest in others, but I had decided a long time ago that this was too much trouble to go through with every idiot that came along.

*   *   *

I awoke to another gray day and got out my list of things to do. I forgot it was Christmas morning until I heard the bells. Because we had no churches on the island I put on my robe and searched the house. They seemed to be coming from Uncle Marten's room. His door was open a couple of inches, so I gave it a push. It was some program he had put on his computer, ringing in Christmas morning.

“Good morning, good morning, good morning!” he called to me jovially, scampering down the hall in his Christmas carpet slippers with holly embroidered on them. I sighed and rolled my eyes. The day's festivities had undoubtedly begun. It was going to be a long one.

“You heard the bells, splendid, splendid! Have you tried the Christmas buffet yet? No? Well, it's set up in the dining hall, of course.” Apparently, in the short time it had taken the bells of Notre Dame to wake up the whole household our dining room had become a dining hall.

“Bacon, eggs, ham, roast beef, no goose, of course, can't have goose, that's for dinner.”

“I don't know, I was kind of looking forward to some breakfast goose,” I said.

“Ho, ho, ho, nothing like a little Christmas humor,” said Uncle Marten forgivingly. “Now, I must go finish stuffing stockings. Want everyone to have stockings round the fire. Round the fire. Awake the dogs and cats, there's plenty for them, too.”

I had visions of rounding everyone up, puppy and cat, who lived their independent lives and were rarely seen, and nailing them to the floor around the fireplace. The morning events were going to be full of interest. I was just thankful I was well enough to withstand all this; it would be awful to have to appear in a weakened state.

I crept downstairs. Then, as I was sitting alone in the semidark “dining hall” with my plate of bacon and eggs, calmly watching dust motes dancing in the one stream of light coming from a window while the rain poured heavily as usual on the roof, down came Uncle Marten dressed to the nines and I realized that I was not going to be able to slop around in my pajamas in his Christmas scenario. He said nothing but had already provided a green velvet dress which yesterday Humdinger had placed on my bed. I trudged back upstairs. It fit more or less because it seemed to be some sort of medieval design, coming nearly floor-length and having a yard-wide waist.

When I came back down and Uncle Marten saw me, he asked, “Where is everyone else? Where is everyone else? This is Christmas after all!” Humdinger was standing with Uncle Marten before the fire, both of them sipping something hot from silver cups. His Christmas outfit from Uncle Marten was a tuxedo but still with the strange butler collar he had arrived with. Humdinger was as composed as always, and Uncle Marten quivering with excitement.

“Right,” said Humdinger, and he and I went to rouse Jocelyn and Mrs. Mendelbaum, who was very confused.

“This is not my holiday, bal toyreh! Loz mich tzu ru. I am a Jew!” she kept protesting to no avail. I don't know what Humdinger did to convince her to come down, but she appeared looking shrunken in what I guess was the fanciest dress she had, a kind of awful-looking thing with large orange flowers. Uncle Marten eyed it with consternation. I could see he was thinking that not getting her a Christmas dress as well had been a great oversight. She clashed with all the cranberry and green. But there was always next year! Jocelyn still had a fever of 102, and so Humdinger carried her downstairs still in her pajamas and wrapped in a blanket.

“No dress? No Christmas finery?” asked Uncle Marten.

“No,” said Humdinger firmly.

“Are you sure?” asked Uncle Marten, looking at Jocelyn's feverish cheeks and then sighing resignedly. “All right, then. It's a pity. It was a very nice red velvet. But never mind. Maybe that would be more suited to Meline, after all. I think really, yes I do, that the red was the nicer of the two. Meline, maybe you'd like the red dress.”

“I don't think a dress meant for me would fit her,” said Jocelyn, proving she could still be judgmental even at death's door.

“If it's like my dress it would fit anyone, it's like a tablecloth with sleeves,” I said, sitting down with a plop on one of what were now the five chairs before the fire. Uncle Marten apparently couldn't stop buying wing chairs and Humdinger must have brought them in quite recently; they were still damp from being dropped outside.

“And the pets!” said Uncle Marten, clapping his hands together and then rubbing them. “Where are those two, what're their names?”

“Aileron and Kitty,” said Humdinger, who was the only one of us who knew. Even I didn't know what the cat was called.

“Kitty? Hmm, not what I would have named a cat,” said Uncle Marten. “I suppose you wouldn't think of renaming her? Something from Shakespeare maybe? Let's all take turns thinking of a good Shakespearean name. All cats should have names from Shakespeare if they must have names at all, and if you think of it, why name a cat? They don't come when you call them. Still, if you must, why not Portia? Your turn,” he said, turning to me.

“Juliet,” I said.

Then he turned to Jocelyn and she followed my lead. “Romeo.”

“But the cat's a girl cat, dear,” said Uncle Marten, who usually didn't bother us with terms of endearment, but this was Christmas, after all.

“The Nurse, then,” she said feverishly and then shivered as if for effect.

“The Nurse?” several of us asked.

“Wasn't there a nurse in that play? I'm sorry, but it's the only play I know and will everyone please leave me alone?” She turned it into one long sentence without pause and we all averted our eyes accordingly. Talk about strange.

“Well then, you, Mrs. Mendelbaum.”

“Who would know by Shakespeare? Me ken brechen, I'm not naming your farkuckt cat,” said Mrs. Mendelbaum and ate a shortbread. We none of us tried talking to her again. Still, it was obvious that Uncle Marten didn't want to leave her out of Christmas or any naming ceremonies that might come along.

“Well then. Humdinger?” said Uncle Marten.

“Kitty,” said Humdinger and thus ended the game.

Good for you, I thought.

“Well, perhaps we had best get on to stockings. Yes, stockings. Humdinger, give me a hand, will you, old boy?” Humdinger followed Uncle Marten into the third-floor bathroom, where, Uncle Marten later told us with glee, he had hidden the filled stockings in the laundry hamper. They carried them in one by one and presented them ceremoniously to us. I could see that Uncle Marten was quite proud of himself. He even had one for himself that he had made Humdinger stuff for him. He had taught him the use of the computer and Internet, which, it surprised me to learn, Humdinger had never used before, and Humdinger had ordered various items he thought Uncle Marten might like. Uncle Marten had paid for them, of course.

“A garlic peeler, very thoughtful, sir,” said Humdinger, taking things out of his stocking. None of us knew the protocol here. Were we all supposed to unstuff our stockings one by one, exclaiming over each other's items, or was it to be some kind of free-for-all? As we sat self-consciously fiddling with the items on top and looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes, so as not to appear either too eager or too reluctant, Uncle Marten solved our social dilemma by ripping through his at a tremendous rate, not commenting on anything but sort of tossing items out into a big pile while he exclaimed “ummmm” and “ah” noncommittally and then cried, “All right, then! Let's get on to the games!” Then he noticed that we had not opened our stockings yet and impatiently signaled by a rolling motion of his right hand that we had best get at it, time was wasting.

I went through my stocking and it was full of an amazing assortment of inappropriate things as if Uncle Marten had ordered things willy-nilly out of a variety of catalogs with no attention whatsoever to whom he was giving them to. Mrs. Mendelbaum got a hair curler, a cocktail shaker, and seven murder mysteries, for some reason, and, I could not help but feel, a rather useless supply of bubble gum.