Название: The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection
Автор: Torey Hayden
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007577736
isbn:
Sheila looked up, astonished. “Me? Who?”
“You read it and find out.”
En route down to Fenton Boulevard after lunch, Sheila was full of ebullience.
“Thanks for that, Torey. That was really nice of you and Miriam and Jeff to do all that for me today,” she said.
“We thought it’d be a bit of good fun. I’m glad you liked it,” I replied.
She smiled. “That’s what I always hated about having a summer birthday. All the other kids at school got some kind of fuss made, you know, like they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ or something, and I never got anything. And I always wanted it. Just once. You know, just once, so you could stand up and everybody’d think you were special.” She paused. “It’s funny how such a silly thing can matter so much when you’re little.”
I nodded.
“If you want the actual, honest-to-God truth, this is the first birthday party I’ve ever had.”
I nodded again. I had suspected as much.
“Once, when I was in this one foster home … I was eight, I think, and turning nine … they said they were going to let me have a party and she took me out to look at paper plates and junk, but …” Turning her head, she gazed out the window. “I didn’t get it. I did something or another, I don’t remember what now, and she told me I wasn’t going to have anything for my birthday because of it. But, you know, I don’t think she was going to do anything anyway, ’cause she never bought the paper plates. I think she was just winding me up.”
“That must have been disappointing,” I said.
“Yeah, but then what’s new?”
Silence.
Sheila looked down at the presents in her lap. Pulling out the gift certificate I’d given her, she examined it, then put it back in its envelope. Then she felt the weave of Miriam’s belt. Finally, she began to page through the play Jeff had given her.
“Why on earth do you suppose he gave me this?” she murmured. “It’s a weird gift.”
I didn’t answer.
“Have you ever read it?”
“Yes, long ago. I did a report on it at school once.” I paused, then giggled. “To be truthful, I didn’t read it. I was about your age and my sole goal in life in those days was to figure out how to short-circuit the work and still get the grades. I was a world-class skimmer. I don’t think I actually read a whole book cover to cover until I was about twenty-two.”
“Torey!” she said, absolutely appalled.
I turned and grinned.
“God, and I thought you were so perfect,” Sheila said.
A pause.
“So, you don’t know what’s in it either?” she asked.
“Well, not other than it’s about Antony and Cleopatra. You know who Cleopatra is, don’t you?”
“Vaguely. A queen in Egypt a long time ago, but that’s about all,” Sheila replied. “I can’t imagine why Jeff thinks I’ll want to read this. Holy shit, Shakespeare.”
“I guess you’ll have to read it and find out.”
I was coming to the roadwork again, so I slowed the car down.
“I remember that other book,” Sheila said. “From your class. The Little Prince. Do you remember reading that to me? It was my best book in the whole world for the longest time. I just couldn’t get enough of it.”
“Yes, I remember it very well,” I said.
“I can still quote all my favorite parts.” She smiled over at me. “You know who I liked best in the book?”
“The prince?” I ventured.
She shook her head.
“The fox?”
“No, the rose. I loved that rose. It was so conceited, so full of itself and yet … Remember how it had those thorns, four thorns, and thought itself so brave? Remember that one bit? The rose said to the little prince, ‘Let the tigers come with their claws!’” Sheila boomed out in a deep, fierce voice. “And the prince said, ‘There are no tigers on my planet, and besides, tigers don’t eat weeds.’ ‘I am not a weed!’” Again, the dramatic rendering. Sheila’s voice squeaked over the word “weed.” “She was so put out. And then she just kept going on, ‘Let the tigers come! I am not at all afraid of tigers!’” Sheila smiled. “I can just imagine that brave little rose.”
“I can see why you liked her,” I said. “You were a bit of a little rose yourself in those days.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh God, I wasn’t, Torey. God. That’s no compliment. A flower? No, it’s the tigers I identified with. Rrrowrr!” she said and struck playfully out at me with fingers arched as claws. “I was the tigers’ kid.”
Over the Fourth of July weekend, I asked Sheila if she would like to come with me for a brief visit to Marysville, where she had been in my class all those years previously. It was a two-hundred-mile journey and I thought it would fit well into the four days we had until the clinic summer school-program resumed.
Sheila accepted enthusiastically. She had been back on only one previous occasion five years before, when her foster family had taken her to visit her father at the penitentiary. It had been almost as long since I’d been there. I’d passed through on one or two occasions since but I hadn’t stopped. With the exception of Chad, all the people I had been closest to were now gone.
The plan was that I would pick her up early on Thursday morning and we would work our way across the state to Marysville at a leisurely pace. Friday and Saturday we would spend looking around. Chad and his family had invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July with them on Saturday evening, and then on Sunday we’d return.
Sheila was waiting outside on the front steps of the duplex when I pulled up. It was very early, only just after six, and the sun was not high enough to dispel all the shadows. Even so, I squinted hard at the figure by the door. Sheila?
“I’ve done this just for you,” she said emphatically, as she flung her duffel bag into the backseat and got in beside me. She buckled the seat belt. “I hope you appreciate it.”
What could I say? The orange hair was gone, replaced by bright-yellow hair that stood up all over her head, as if it had a life of its own. Sort of Marilyn Monroe meets Bride of Frankenstein.
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