The Unfortunates by McManus Sophie

Author:McManus, Sophie [McManus, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780374709747
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-06-02T07:00:00+00:00

22

Walk, stay—these words came into her mind that first day at Oak Park, when she put herself in the supply closet. How embarrassing that was. She thought it was a room and that she’d find a telephone and call for the car. Stay—when she heard George squeeze in behind her wheelchair. She didn’t have time to reverse. “You don’t want to live in here, do you?” he’d said, almost gently. She’d clamped her mouth and looked at her hands on the rubber handles. Nothing to be said to nothing.

Every few weeks she takes a phone call from Pat, from Nan, from Esme and Annie. She tells them all is well. She’ll be home soon. Brief and cheerful and nothing about the pneumonia. They must not suspect how reduced her circumstances are, how she is afraid. The less they know, the less it can be true.

Toto used to say, “Please walk me to the corner, Cecilia,” her Irish accent buoyant and stern. Or “Walk your old Toto into the park.” Halfway along shouting, “Stay!” Startling and hilarious. In the beginning, to teach CeCe to mind the curb. Later, to make them laugh. CeCe was nine when the United States declared victory over Japan, and Toto (properly, Miss Moira Quinn) deemed CeCe old enough to join the crowds. For an hour they walked south, to Times Square, the scraps of cloth and ticker tape thicker and thicker under their feet. They jostled in among the revelers. Toto laughed with a stranger, something CeCe had never seen her do. Adults so happy it was frightening. A man lifted CeCe up and Toto said, “Stay,” in a different voice. When she was done scolding the man, CeCe screwed up the courage to ask if her mother could finally come home.

“What’s this now?” Toto asked, leaning the starched wall of her torso to Cecilia, the crowd flowing around them.

“Mata Hari” was all CeCe could say, staring at her patent shoes. She’d learned the story of the female spy from a joke her father told. She didn’t understand the joke, but she divined the truth: her mother was a spy. Evelyn had gone away just after the invasion of Poland. She returned to visit only twice, and with many other people always in the room. So beautiful! Never saying anything, but with the feeling of something important to say. What else but great sacrifice could explain why Evelyn left, and left again? Each mission more daring than the last. CeCe had kept her mother’s secret. This made CeCe a hero of the war too.

“Dear little lady,” Toto said. “Poor little-little, no. Your mother loves you as I do. She’s no sinful woman like that Mata Hari. Who’s been telling you stories?” Toto yanked CeCe back uptown. No walk, no stay.

The Astrasyne had been working. Sorrow, to have her progress smacked away by pneumonia! Now, when walking is difficult, her mind taps and drags with her feet, walk-me-stay-walk-me-stay, as she moves from bed to chair, from chair to hall, from hall to garden, from garden to lake.

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