Getting Near to Baby (15 page)

“This evening?” Uncle Hob could hardly believe it. “On such short notice?”

“It's more or less a get-to-know-you meeting. For the girls, I mean.”

“You think they want to see for themselves if the rumors of cannibalism and general terrorism are true?”

This caught me by surprise. Uncle Hob rarely jokes with Aunt Patty. At least I hoped he was joking. As usual, Aunt Patty didn't get it. Or she ignored it. “We didn't have any plans anyway,” Aunt Patty said.

“No, and I was looking forward to it,” Uncle Hob said. He had a new crossword magazine. He was already deep into the first puzzle.

I tried to side with Uncle Hob. “Liz is coming over later with Robbie and Isaac,” I said. “We had those plans.”

Aunt Patty acted as if I hadn't spoken. “I think we ought to go on over there for a few minutes, just to say hello and to introduce the girls,” Aunt Patty said to Uncle Hob. “We won't stay long.”

Uncle Hob gave in. “I warn you, I won't stay longer than an hour and fifteen minutes. That's neither long nor short. It's just right. And it's more than I want to do at all.” But he didn't yet put his crossword puzzle down. He printed in another answer.

Little Sister looked at me. I knew that look. I said, “I sure hope she isn't going to be like Cynthia Wainwright.”

“Just you worry about being nicer to her than you were to Cynthia Wainwright, Willa Jo,” Aunt Patty said. “Then we'll see how things go.”

I hated to hear Aunt Patty say that. I thought she knew Cynthia Wainwright wasn't my fault. “I was nicer to Cynthia Wainwright than she deserved,” I said.

Aunt Patty didn't even look at me when she said, “Don't be a smart aleck.” She was checking her hair in the mirror on the wall near the stairs. There wasn't any bite to it, which in the end was what angered me. She was so sure she could boss us around she didn't look at us when she did it; she didn't raise her voice; she didn't have to pay us any mind at all.

I was suddenly so mad at her I could have spit. I could have kicked holes in walls. I was mad enough to say something mean, but I couldn't think of anything mean enough to say. I turned to Little Sister, who had been listening to everything. I didn't even think about what I did next.

I slipped my fingers into the cuffs of my shorts and snapped them.

“I saw that, Willa Jo,” Aunt Patty said in a shocked voice. “Did you see that, Hob?”

Uncle Hob looked up from his crossword puzzle. “What? See what?”

“Willa Jo's making fun of me. She snapped her shorts.”

Uncle Hob looked back down at his puzzle.

“Well, thank you very much for your support,” Aunt Patty said.

“Now, dumplin'—”

“I don't know what you all want from me,” Aunt Patty wailed to the room at large. “My yard is overrun with Fingers. My reputation is in tatters, what with scenes at the Piggly Wiggly and whatever Lucy Wainwright had to say to her friends. To say nothing of—” She paused, sputtering like she was about to run out of gas. “Why, these children engaged in all-out combat with that Bible school teacher, never mind the ticks.”

Uncle Hob said, “Now, Patty, don't get carried away.”

Aunt Patty's voice rose to a near shriek. “Carried away? Have you lost your mind, Hob?”

“I might be about to,” he said, never looking up from his crossword.

“Nobody, just nobody in this house appreciates me one bit,” Aunt Patty said. She paced the living room, waving her arms about to punctuate everything she was saying. “All I'm good for is cooking and cleaning and throwing out those dead june bugs morning after morning—”

Uncle Hob looked up from his crossword.

Aunt Patty stopped and looked at Little Sister, but Little Sister was looking at me. Her eyes were dark with the meaning of Aunt Patty's complaint. “It was only a june bug,” I said in a small voice. Not that it would do any good. Little Sister is like Mom; she wouldn't hurt a bug.

Aunt Patty looked just as miserable. “I didn't mean to tell you,” she said.

Little Sister turned and ran upstairs. She didn't look back.

“Well, now I've done it,” Aunt Patty said. “Why couldn't you just get in the car and go, Willa Jo?”

“Me? You think this is my fault?”

“There is not one cooperative bone in your body—”

“You don't want someone to cooperate, Aunt Patty,” I shouted. “You just want everyone to do as they are told.”

“Do you see what I mean?” Aunt Patty said. “Willa Jo, I am just fed up with you.”

“Then send me home,” I said. I went upstairs like Little Sister, but I wouldn't run. I stomped. I was satisfied to know that Aunt Patty watched me all the way up.

I expected to find Little Sister sitting by the window or something. Crying, maybe. But she had gone to bed. She wasn't asleep, but she wasn't crying either. There seemed nothing to do but get ready for bed too. By the time I lay down in the other bed, I realized I was tired enough to sleep.

The only thought I had as I fell asleep, in all her upset and pacing and all, Aunt Patty had never once stepped off those plastic carpet runners.

W
hen after a while Uncle Hob doesn't get around to asking why we are sitting on the roof, I say, “I guess you're wondering what we're doing out here.”

“Oh, well,” he says, with a little shrug.

I guess he knows most of it already. About Liz and Isaac, and us wanting to play with them. He knows about Cynthia and Bible school. He knows Aunt Patty is fed up. None of those things take much explanation. The thing is, it doesn't seem right to tell Uncle Hob that Aunt Patty is a problem. So I tell him I don't really care for brown leather sandals. That I like my dirty white tennis shoes fine. That I'd like to have them back. Plus, Little Sister has a blister on her heel, which she is obliging enough to show him right away. I'm just sorry mine has calloused over.

“Well, getting your old shoes back shouldn't be too hard,” he says. “They're up there in the hall closet. Nobody's thrown a thing away”

“I've always worn tennis shoes,” I say to explain myself. Also because I don't want him to be mad. Or to hurt his feelings like we've already done to Aunt Patty. He and Aunt Patty have been awful good to us in a lot of ways.

“We'll see to it when we go downstairs,” Uncle Hob says. “We'll put a Band-Aid on Little Sister's heel.”

I'm feeling some better already but not better enough that I'm ready to go inside. So I get quiet, hoping there will be no more talk of going downstairs. In fact, there is no talk at all for maybe five minutes. So I am some relieved when he comes up with a subject. Any subject.

“Did I tell you about the summer I was turning thirteen?” he says. “And I was sent off to stay with my grandpa because my gramma had died? My folks had the idea I could be a help to him.”

“You were supposed to do the cooking and stuff?” I say. The thing that crosses my mind.right off, how lucky we were to have a garden right outside the kitchen door, and plenty of canned goods on hand. And luckier still, for me, that Mom didn't expect much housekeeping to get done if she wasn't the one doing it.

“Not exactly,” Uncle Hob says. “I was there to give him somebody to do for. They figured he would eat breakfast if he had to see to it that I got breakfast. You know what I mean?”

“Like, he would take good care of himself if you were there for him to take care of. I see.”

“It didn't work out that way, though. No one had given much thought to how much I missed my gramma. What really happened was we both let things go together.”

“What do you mean?”

“We sat around singing funny, sad songs and telling sadder stories,” Uncle Hob says. “We didn't wash or cut our hair. Grandpa didn't shave. We ate peanuts and hard-boiled eggs when we got hungry. He let me drink beer. When they came to get me before the start of the school year, our hair had grown to our shoulders.”

“It must have been terrible,” I say.

Uncle Hob stares off into space, the way he does when he is working on mathematical equations.

“I say, it must have been terrible,” I say in a louder voice.

Uncle Hob looks like he is waking up. “No,” he says. “I only this minute remembered. It wasn't terrible at all.”

“H
ob?”

We hear Aunt Patty calling out the back door. Her voice is sort of distant.

“Hob?” she calls again, sounding even farther away. But she is closer, really, calling from somewhere inside the house.

I look at Uncle Hob. He looks like he has not heard a thing, not one thing, but I know that can't be true. Little Sister is looking at me and her eyebrows are rising like bread.

“Hob?” Aunt Patty calls, and she is coming out through the garage. She looks around, then looks up like she thought of asking us if we have seen Uncle Hob.

“Hob!” Aunt Patty cries, seeing him sitting up here with us.

“Patty,” Uncle Hob says in a voice that suggests Aunt Patty is someone he bumped into on a street comer.

“Hob?” Aunt Patty is clearly hoping he will say something to explain why he is sitting on the roof with us.

“Patty,” Uncle Hob says as if she has left chocolate fingerprints on the walls.

“Hob,” Aunt Patty wails, addressing the world in general. “What am I going to do with this family? Everybody's crazy but me.”

“I wouldn't be too sure about that,” Uncle Hob says, a smile tugging at one comer of his mouth.

“Hob!” Aunt Patty is suddenly angry. “This is the last straw. The very last straw. What am I to do with all of you?”

“If you can't beat ‘em, join 'em,” Uncle Hob says. But I can see he doesn't mean it. So can Aunt Patty.

“Are you out of your ever-lovin' mind?” she asks.

“I'm enjoying the breeze,” Uncle Hob says. “I'm enjoying the company of two lovely young ladies. I'll be down directly ”

Aunt Patty is not going to be jollied out of her mad. She draws in a deep breath, like she might blow us off the rooftop with whatever she is about to say. But then Mrs. Potts calls, “You-oo, Patty.” She is coming to visit.

By rights, we all should have noticed Mrs. Potts sooner. We can see anybody coming for miles in most directions. But Aunt Patty held our full attention, right up until Mrs. Potts hollered.

“Oh; no,” Aunt Patty moans. “I will never, never live this down.”

“Wave,” Uncle Hob says, and raises his arm. Little Sister and I do the same, waggling our hands like Mrs. Potts is a personal friend of Santa Claus.

“What is going on up there now?” Mrs. Potts calls out as she approaches the end of the driveway “I believe the heat must have affected all your minds.”

“Our minds are fine,” Aunt Patty snaps.

“Hob, tell me something so I know you're feeling like yourself,” Mrs. Potts calls.

Uncle Hob sits quiet for a minute. I imagine he's thinking up the right thing to say. Like, “You always sit in the third pew, left side, Sunday mornings in church, Mrs. Potts.” But no. He says in a voice so low even I can barely make it out, “You girls sit still as statues, hear?”

He gets up, steps up higher on the roof, a way behind Little Sister and me, and bows deeply from the waist. His short shirtsleeves flutter gently in the breeze. Down below, Aunt Patty makes a squawky sound. Mrs. Potts gasps. There is even a breathy squeak from Little Sister.

The roof tiles are so hot I cannot set my leg against them for long, turned as I am to watch Uncle Hob. They are only bearable where we have been sitting directly on them. I cannot imagine how Uncle Hob's pale bare feet can stand on them.

Uncle Hob straightens, his arms swing gracefully away from his body, and he starts to dance in this funny, old-fashioned way of bent knees and shuffling feet. His arms are held out to his sides a little. His tie flaps gently in the breeze. He is humming to himself, “Bum . . . bum bum bum, bum,” as he bobs and weaves. Little Sister's had a tight grip on my arm since Uncle Hob got to his feet, but now her hand loosens and falls away.

“Bum, bum ba bop bum. Bum de bum bop bum ...” The tune is not familiar but it occurs to me that there ought to be the sound of foot-tappings or shoe-slidings, at the very least. Maybe an orchestra. He looks so fine in his Sunday best. Uncle Hob is a good dancer.

He shuffles one way, then the other, then turns in a slow circle that draws a kind of sigh from Aunt Patty. Uncle Hob bows once more, differently. Like he is king of the roof. He straightens and says, “I have never felt more like myself, Mrs. Potts.”

When I look down to see how Aunt Patty is taking this, she is looking at Uncle Hob in the funniest way. Partly as if she has never seen him before. Partly as if he is the finest of tea sets and he is hers, all hers. Even as I catch sight of it, however, it is a look that is disappearing behind her awareness of Mrs. Potts, who is still beside her.

“Your mother should never have sent you to that college up north, Hobart Hobson,” Mrs. Potts says.

“It wouldn't have made a bit of difference,” Aunt Patty says. Aunt Patty glances at me and almost smiles. Almost. There is a look in her eyes that I like.

Mrs. Potts puts both fists on her hips like she is prepared to argue the point. But Mrs. Biddle's door opens and she steps out on her porch to call out, “Doris.” Mrs. Potts turns to look in that direction.