Unbreathed Memories

chapter 13

Julie and I drove directly to Baskin-Robbins on Smith Avenue. While we waited for her prescription to be filled at the pharmacy next door, I treated her to that ice-cream cone I had promised. I watched, with affection, while Julie strolled up and down in front of the display case, her brow screwed up in concentration as she tried to make a selection from among all the tubs of flavors behind the glass. No one else was in the store, and the youngster behind the counter had been well brought up, waiting patiently for his pint-sized customer to come to a decision. After several long minutes, Julie pressed an index finger flat on the glass and announced, “That one. Chocolate. And put sprinkles on it.” She glanced up at me sideways through fringed lashes. “Please?” I smiled and nodded. When the clerk handed Julie her cone, I ordered a rum raisin for myself.

While we sat in the store, licking our cones, Julie mused, “When I get old, I’m going to get a job.”

I ran my tongue around the perimeter of my cone, catching early drips. “That would be nice. If you worked here, you could eat ice cream all day.”

Julie shook her head, setting her ponytails dancing. “Nuh-uh. I want to be a doctor.”

“Like Dr. Voorhis?”

“Nuh-uh. I want to take care of sick animals.”

“Then you want to be a veterinarian.”

She nodded, her tongue still glued to the chocolate cone. “Yeah. A vegetarian. Mommy says we can have a dog when she gets better.”

I admired her optimism, but was saddened to think that it might be a long time, then, before the Cardinale household ever acquired a pet. I looked at Julie’s wide, innocent eyes peering over the top of her cone and swallowed around the lump that had suddenly developed in my throat. “What kind of a dog do you want, Julie?”

“A big, huggy dog,” she said. “Not little and skinny like Wishbone on TV.”

I thought of Snowshoes again, for the second time in as many days. “When your mommy was a little girl, Julie, we had a big fluffy dog named Snowshoes.” I held my hand out about three feet from the floor. “He was this tall.”

“I want a dog like Snowshoes,” she said, cautiously nibbling the rim of her cone.

We enjoyed our ice cream, discussing dogs and cats, most of which she had seen on TV, except for a neighbor’s cat, a sleek white animal named Sir Francis Drake who enjoyed visiting the Cardinale garden on sunny afternoons. “Queen Isabella died,” Julie said, matter-of-factly.

“Queen Isabella?”

“She was the lady cat married to Sir Francis,” Julie explained.

“Oh.” I squashed my ice cream down into the cone with the flat of my tongue. “That’s too bad.”

“Mommy says that happens. Animals die.” She looked up at me. “People, too.”

“That’s true, Julie.”

“Mommy’s doctor died, and now she cries all the time.”

“I know.”

“Maybe if we get a dog, Mommy will stop crying.”

“I certainly hope so, Julie.”

Until then, I had been reluctant to bring up the party Julie told the doctor about, but it had been preying on my mind. I decided to ask.

“Was Mommy happy last night? At the party?”

“Mommy said it was Daddy’s party and we had to go to bed.” She glanced at me sideways and a sly grin crept over her face.

“But you didn’t go to bed, did you, Julie?”

“Nuh-uh. Sean and Dylan and me, we watched from the top of the steps.”

“What did you see?”

“Just a bunch of grown-ups with sheets on, drinking wine.”

“Are you sure about the sheets?”

She nodded. “Mommy had a pink one.”

“What were they doing in the sheets?”

“Singing funny songs. And dancing.”

I was having a hard time picturing my introverted sister and her straightlaced husband cavorting around their living room wearing sheets.

“What else were they doing?”

Julie shrugged. “It was really boring. Dylan let me play with his Game Boy. Do you have a Game Boy, Aunt Hannah?”

“I have a computer.”

“Game Boys are fun,” she announced before polishing off the flat waffled bottom of her cone and licking her fingers. “I want to have a Game Girl!”

I dipped a napkin in ice water and dabbed at the sticky brown residue remaining on her lips and chin. I wished I could ask more about the party, but realized that Julie had probably told me all she knew. “Time to go, Miss Game Girl. Your prescription must be ready by now, and I also have another errand to run.”

She hopped off the stool. “OK.”

First we stopped at the hardware store, where I had a copy made of Georgina’s church key. All the while I was paying at the pharmacy for Julie’s antibiotic and driving back to my sister’s home on Colorado, I puzzled about the party Julie had described. Julie was the most pragmatic child I knew. If she said it happened, it happened. But perhaps it had happened in a fever-induced dream. No matter how I looked at it, it just wouldn’t compute.

Back at the house I sat Julie on the kitchen table and gave her a generous spoonful of a viscous pink medicine that the pharmacist said was supposed to taste like strawberries, but, judging from the grimace on Julie’s face after she swallowed it, probably didn’t. Upstairs, I settled Julie into bed for a nap and read her the first few chapters of Muttketeers!, a Wishbone adventure book. By the time I got to “ ‘All for one and one for all,’ the musketeers and D’Artagnan shouted together,” Julie was asleep, with Abby rabbit nestled in the crook of her arm. I laid the slim paperback next to her hand and slipped out of the room.

Remembering my promise to do something about the laundry, I visited the bathroom used by the children and dumped the overflowing clothes hamper out on a spread-out towel. I gathered up the corners of the towel like a hobo’s bundle and headed for the basement. With both arms full, I had to flip the light switch up with my elbow and make my way cautiously down the wooden stairs.

Georgina’s washer and dryer sat in a dark corner of the basement, near the furnace. I batted my hand around over my head until I made contact with the cord that turned on the overheard bulb. When light flooded the area, I could see I had my job cut out for me. Piles of laundry were already stacked up in front of the washing machine, and the dryer’s door yawned open. Clean, dry clothes spilled out onto the door as if someone had been pawing through them, looking for something. I tossed my bundle on top of the accumulated pile and leaned over the dryer, pulling out items, mostly towels, and folding them up on top of the machine. That done, I lifted the lid on the washer. It was full of damp laundry still stuck to the sides of the drum by the spin cycle.

I reached into the washing machine and started extracting items and shoveling them into the dryer. A sheet. Several washcloths. A towel. Another sheet. And another. My God! The load was almost entirely sheets. With my heart pounding in my ears, I checked out the pile of laundry that had been waiting to go into the washer. More sheets. Hardly daring to breathe, I counted them. My sister (or someone) had been in the process of washing twenty-three sheets. Some were twin size; some doubles; and many bore the telltale stains of red wine. Julie hadn’t been imagining things, after all!

I leaned against the washing machine and tried to catch my breath. Surely there was a logical explanation. If so, I couldn’t imagine what it could be.

I loaded the children’s clothes into the washer, scooped some detergent out of the box and sprinkled it over them, twisted the dial to regular wash, and got the machine going. Other than incredible sloth, what could explain the presence of so many dirty sheets? The washer began vibrating against my back as I pondered. Visions of Georgina and Scott frolicking around their living room with their sheet-clad friends while the children were consigned to bed made my blood run cold. I thought about what Gwen had said about satanic cults. Oh, my God! Had the children witnessed some sort of diabolical ritual?

Normally I would have stuffed the clothes into the machine, tossed in a handful of detergent, and gone upstairs. But for some reason, I stayed there with my troubled thoughts, mesmerized by the rhythmic ja-jung, ja-jung of the washer and enjoying the warm, gentle vibrations against my back. The washing machine entered its first spin cycle, making so much noise in combination with the dryer that I didn’t hear my brother-in-law until he had come all the way down the basement steps and was standing behind me. “You didn’t need to do that,” he said.

I nearly leapt out of my Nikes. I pressed a hand to my chest, hoping to keep my heart from bursting out of it. “You scared the hell out of me, Scott!”

Scott’s face crinkled into a grin. “Sorry.” His arm swept the room. “You didn’t have to do the laundry. Taking care of Julie was enough.” Beneath the light from the unshaded overhead bulb, Scott looked older than forty-five. His prominent brows shaded his eyes, causing dark half-moons to appear under his lower lids.

“The children were out of clean underwear,” I said. “You should see what Julie wore this morning. Straight out of the Salvation Army reject bin.”

Scott’s face grew serious. “I’m sorry about that. Georgina…” He shrugged. “Well, you know.”

I nodded. “That’s OK. I don’t mind doing the laundry. Not a bit.”

“Thanks, Hannah.” He bent over and began sorting through the pile of laundry at his feet.

It was this touch of domesticity that moved me. I found myself warming to my brother-in-law, although I wasn’t so blind as to discount entirely the possibility that I was being manipulated again. I couldn’t stand not knowing. “Scott, you have to tell me one thing.”

He glanced up from where he had been separating dark green towels from the light-colored sheets. “Yes?”

“What’s the story with all the sheets? You have months’ worth down here. I don’t even own that many sheets.”

I studied his face, looking for any signs of panic or alarm, but he simply grinned.

“It’ll sound kind of funny, but the truth is, we were having a party.”

“A party?” I gawped.

“I thought it would cheer Georgina up. Last month I talked her into serving as rehearsal accompanist for the amateur theater group I’m involved with. She may have mentioned it.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“So when they were looking around for a place to hold the cast party, I volunteered.”

“A party I can understand, Scott, but sheets?”

He broke into huge, rumbling laughter, throwing his head back with his mouth open so wide I could see his fillings. “Oh, Hannah, whatever must you think? Didn’t I mention the play? It’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

Even in the uncertain light, relief must have flooded my face, because Scott crossed the room and slipped his arm around my shoulders. “Toga! Toga! Toga!” he chanted, inches from my ear.

I slumped against him, weak with relief. “When Julie told me about the party, Scott, I have to confess I was more than puzzled.”

“I think the party did Georgina good, but it’s hard to say. At least she smiled at me for the first time since Diane Sturges died.” Scott indicated the laundry. “Georgina had put everything on hold.” He cast me a glance heavy with meaning. “I mean everything! But, after the party, she seemed almost normal. She even agreed to look for another therapist.”

Until he reminded me, I had nearly forgotten the reason for my niece-sitting gig. “And did she find one?”

Scott shook his head. “We didn’t think the guy she saw today was a good match. But she’s got an appointment with another therapist early next week. It won’t be long.”

I yanked the cord that turned off the light immediately over our head. “Togas, huh?” I remembered a similar party at a co-op dorm on East College Street, a dilapidated pile that in later years I swore had been used as a set for the movie Animal House.

“Togas.” He led the way back up the basement steps, then turned to look down at me, standing four steps below. “Why? What did you think?”

“Scott, you really don’t want to know.”