The Girl with the Silver Eyes

  “Katie! Where are you? Oh—honey, be careful out there, it’s a long way to the ground.”

  Monica stood in the opening, dressed for work in a smart summer suit of pale blue that made her eyes bluer and her hair more blonde. There was an anxious expression on her pretty face.

  “How could I fall off, when I’m sitting down behind the bars?” Katie asked reasonably. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes. The sitter just arrived. Come in and meet her, darling.”

  “I told you,” Katie said. “I don’t need a sitter. I’m almost ten years old, you know.”

  “Yes. But you’re used to living in the country, and it’s different, in the city. All kinds of things can happen—”

  “I know about child molesters and all that,” Katie said with dignity. “And keeping the doors locked, and not admitting on the telephone that I’m alone. I’m not stupid.”

  “No, of course not. But I’ll feel better if there’s someone here with you. So indulge your old mother, will you? And put up with her?”

  Katie got up off the floor of the balcony and went inside, sighing. It was so silly, and a needless expense, too, to have a sitter for someone who was nearly ten. Especially when she knew Monica really couldn’t afford it. She’d already admitted this apartment was the best she could manage, and she’d have to cut down on something else to pay for it.

  Not that there was anything wrong with the apartment. It was very nice. Only it was small. Monica had been living in a one bedroom place, which was cheaper, and had had to find this one in a hurry when Grandma Welker died. Katie’s bedroom was so little there was only room for a single bed, a dresser, and a tiny desk, but it was considered a two bedroom apartment. The pantry at Grandma’s had been larger than Katie’s new bedroom. Some of the closets had been almost as large.

  “Mrs. Hornecker, this is my daughter Katie,” Monica was saying brightly. “Katie, this is the sitter, Mrs. Hornecker.”

  Katie took one look at Mrs. H. and knew she was going to hate her.

  2

  MRS. HORNECKER WAS TALL AND thin and had very large feet. She also had a wart on her chin with two hairs sticking out of it.

  Katie stared at the wart, fascinated. She had never seen anything so ugly on a human face. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  Monica, her hand on the doorknob, paused to look back.

  “Does what hurt?” Mrs. H. asked. She had a voice that sounded as if it were rising through gravel.

  “The wart,” Katie said.

  Mrs. H.’s face got red, and Monica made a strangled sound.

  “Katie, for pete’s sake, it isn’t polite to say things like that!”

  Mrs. H. cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded gravelly. “You go on to work, Mrs. Welker. I’ll handle the little girl.”

  Monica scuttled through the opening, glad to escape. Mrs. H. stared down on Katie as if deciding whether to eat her fried or boiled.

  “You’re old enough to have better manners than that,” Mrs. H. said. “To make remarks about things like warts.”

  “Are you supposed to give me lessons in manners?” Katie asked. “I think you were just hired to sit me. Which I don’t need. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight right now,” Mrs. H. told her. “I don’t stand for no sass. Your ma said you were a little bit difficult, but I don’t think you’re any match for me.”

  Don’t you? Katie thought. Well, they’d see about that. She suspected she was more than a match for Mrs. H., and she tried not to be hurt about Monica saying she was difficult. How was she difficult?

  “Your ma said you ain’t had your breakfast yet. I’ll get it,” Mrs. H. said and stomped on her enormous feet into the kitchen. “I believe in kids taking responsibilities,” she said. “Suppose while I’m cooking, you set the table. I had to be here so early, I didn’t eat yet, either, so set two places.”

  Katie said nothing. She stood in the doorway, not moving, while the sitter looked into the refrigerator. Mrs. H. got out eggs and butter and jam and a package of sausages, and then she opened the freezer and found a can of frozen orange juice. After a few minutes she turned crossly from what she was doing to say, “I told you to set the table, miss.”

  “It’s set,” Katie said. Her eyes had a silvery gleam behind her glasses, and she knew it was true that she did look rather like an owl with those horn-rims.

  “You ain’t moved from that spot . . .” Mrs. H. began, and then stopped. For the table had two plastic plates, juice glasses, and silverware on it. For the first time the sitter seemed uncertain. “You forgot the napkins,” she said, though not as if they mattered very much. Katie could almost see the workings of the sitter’s mind, wondering how she’d managed to set the table without moving. “Your ma set the table before she left?”

  Katie didn’t answer. She’d learned it was disconcerting to grownups if you didn’t answer. She waited until Mrs. H. reached out with a fork to turn the sausages, then whisked a pair of paper napkins from the holder on the counter to a place beside each plate.

  One of them was still moving when the sitter turned toward Katie and the Formica topped table.

  Mrs. H. swallowed and dropped the fork. It didn’t fall onto the floor, however, but drifted slowly toward the counter and came to a rest beside the electric frying pan.

  All the color washed out of Mrs. H.’s face, and Katie watched a tremor begin at her lips and then spread to her hands.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Katie’s small face was blank. She knew perfectly well she was taking a risk, but the idea of having Mrs. H. for a sitter all summer, until it was time to go back to school, was more than she could bear. She had to get rid of her at once, today.

  Mrs. H. moistened her lips. “Where you been?” she asked carefully. “These years you weren’t living with your ma?”

  “Locked up, mostly,” Katie said. It was partly true. Grandma Welker had taken to locking her in at night, sometimes, until she found out that it didn’t work, that somehow the key would turn in the lock, or the bar would slide back, even if they were not within Katie’s reach but on the other side of the door.

  Mrs. H. was very pale. She’d forgotten about eating.

  Katie, however, was hungry. She decided not to overdo things by causing the sausages and eggs to come to her across the kitchen, so she walked over and got her own, leaving some for the sitter. Besides, she was afraid the loaded plate might be too heavy for her to hold in the air and would fall on the floor.

  She had forgotten to bring the toast, however; it popped up just as the telephone rang. Mrs. H. turned her head, and the toast leaped out of the toaster and sailed across the kitchen. Mrs. H. would not have noticed except that one slice missed its mark; instead of landing on Katie’s plate, it hit the edge of the table and fell with a little scuffling sound to the floor.

  The telephone continued to ring, and Mrs. H. fled to answer it.

  Katie ate her breakfast, all of it, and the sitter had not yet come back. She wondered if she ought to let well enough alone, or if something more was needed to assure that Mrs. H. would not return tomorrow.

  She decided to wait and see what happened. In the meantime, she would find out if there was anyone in the swimming pool. She’d been told she must not ever swim unless there was someone with her. She tried to picture Mrs. H. in a bathing suit, and her usually solemn face cracked in a grin.

  The little balcony in front was a private one, not connected to the one for 2-B. However, there was a railed deck that ran around the inside of the building, overlooking the pool, and everyone in the apartment had access to that. Katie went out onto the deck and stood looking down into the bright blue water.

  There was no one swimming. She hadn’t really thought there would be, this time of day, although it was already getting quite hot in the sun. She wondered if there were any kids living here besides herself. She’d asked Monica when she arrived, night before last, but Monica
had only lived there herself for a week. She didn’t know anybody yet.

  Katie sat down, cross-legged, Indian fashion, on the warm boards of the deck. Maybe if she waited someone would decide to swim. Or at least come out onto the deck so she could see who lived here and what they looked like.

  She couldn’t imagine living here a week and not knowing anybody. It was certainly going to be different from living in the country near a little town like Delaney. Here she wouldn’t be able to go for long walks by herself and make the leaves in the fall swirl up like a cloud of brightly colored smoke and talk to herself without having everybody think she was crazy. The kids called her that, sometimes. Crazy Katie.

  Why should it be crazy to talk to yourself? Who else were you going to talk to, if you didn’t have any friends?

  Katie didn’t think it was peculiar, but she didn’t like the way people looked at her when she talked to herself, so she only did it when she was alone. Or thought she was alone. Around here, she’d feel as if someone were watching and listening all the time, behind the sliding glass doors and the drawn draperies. All of them were drawn except her own, behind her.

  Through the sliding doors she’d left half open, she heard Mrs. H.’s voice on the telephone. “Well, you tell her to call home as soon as she gets in, please.”

  So she was calling Monica already. Katie wriggled a little, uneasily, wondering if Mrs. H. would tell Monica exactly what had happened, or if she’d simply quit. She hoped she’d just quit. As often happened after she’d given in to the temptation to shake someone up a bit, Katie was now having second thoughts. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so obvious about the things she did, just to frighten the sitter off. Maybe, one of these days, someone who was grownup would decide she was crazy, and they’d really lock her up. In a place where she couldn’t manipulate the locks and get loose.

  The thought made her cold, and she rubbed at the goosebumps that rose on her bare arms.

  Monica had driven up to Delaney to get her the day before yesterday, Saturday, coming to the Tanner’s where Katie had slept in the spare room ever since Grandma Welker had died. Mrs. Tanner, who was half-blind and more than half-deaf, didn’t think there was anything peculiar about Katie. You could run the shades up and down, turn the lights on and off, adjust the volume or change the channel on TV, or let the pages of the book on your lap turn themselves, and Mrs. Tanner didn’t even notice. So when Monica asked rather nervously how they’d been getting along, Mrs. Tanner smiled and said just fine, she and Katie always got along, and she was sure going to miss Katie’s reading.

  Monica had seemed relieved at that, and said no, they didn’t have time to stay for supper; they had a long drive and they’d better go right away. She’d loaded Katie’s belongings into the Celica, and crammed Katie in between things, and they’d taken off for the city. Katie had paused only long enough to pat old Dusty’s doggy head. There was a lump in her throat, so she didn’t say anything. Old Dusty was probably too deaf to hear her, anyway.

  They stopped on the way for hamburgers with onions and french fries and milkshakes. Katie had pineapple and Monica had vanilla.

  It wasn’t easy to talk to Monica. Katie told herself that since Monica was her mother, they ought to love each other, especially now if they were going to live together again.

  She didn’t feel like loving Monica, though. How could you not resent the fact that your mother had given you to someone else to raise, instead of keeping you herself?

  Monica tried to explain, of course. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you, honey. You know that, don’t you? I’ve told you before, it was because I had to work and I couldn’t take care of you when you were little. When your daddy and I were together, why, then we at least made enough money to pay for a sitter. Or, most of the time, Daddy worked one shift and I worked another one, and we took care of you between us. But I just couldn’t do it after Daddy left.”

  Monica glanced at her quickly, driving along the highway, but Katie didn’t look back. Her hair was blowing in the wind, and it felt good and cool on her hot cheeks. She pretended to be interested in a herd of Holstein cows grazing in a field, although she’d seen plenty of cows. She supposed there wouldn’t be any where they were going.

  “I always wished,” Monica said, “that I didn’t have to live so far away from you, so that I could come and visit you more often. I did miss you, Katie.”

  Katie said nothing, and after that Monica didn’t talk much the rest of the way. That was until just before they got there, when she suddenly cleared her throat the way grownups did when they were telling you things for your own good. So far, Katie hadn’t seen that it really was for her own good, but that’s what they often said.

  “You’ll meet Nathan tomorrow,” Monica said. “He’s a good friend of mine. He’ll probably come over tomorrow.”

  Katie hadn’t expected that. She turned her head so quickly that it hurt her neck. “Does he live there?”

  Monica turned pink. “No. He’s just a good friend. But he’ll be there a lot.”

  Katie’s alarm subsided, not all the way, but a little. She was glad this Nathan wasn’t going to live with them. She was uncomfortable about the idea of her mother having a boyfriend, though. She knew that was what they called them, even though they were grown men. She’d heard the kids at school talking about their mother’s boyfriends, or their father’s girl friends. Most of them would rather have lived with parents who were married to each other, but they were resigned to not being able to. Kids had to resign themselves to all kinds of things they didn’t really like.

  When they got to the apartment, it was late, and they went right to bed and slept late the next morning. By the time they’d had a late breakfast, Nathan was there. He was a big man with dark hair and dark eyes and a brushy dark beard. He grinned at Katie and said, “Hi, kid.”

  “Good afternoon,” Katie said. She had looked around for signs that Nathan spent a lot of time there, and then remembered that Monica had only been there herself for a week, so nothing looked quite lived-in yet. There was a pack of cigarettes beside an ashtray on the coffee table, though, and Nathan lit one of them. Katie hated tobacco smoke, and she edged away from him.

  Nathan looked at Monica and rolled his eyes. “Get her. Good afternoon.” He mimicked Katie’s solemn words. “Is this your kid or your mother?”

  “Stop it,” Monica said. “Let Katie be herself.”

  Who else could she be, Katie wondered. She walked around the living room, peering through the sliding glass doors to see the pool on one end—which looked interesting—and the balcony and the parking lot on the street side. There was one bookcase, and Katie pushed her glasses up on her nose without touching them and looked at the titles. Monica’s tastes ran to romances and thrillers. Well, Katie found romances rather boring, unless they had a lot of swashbuckling action in them, with sword fights or gun battles. But some of the thrillers weren’t bad. She took out a book with a bright red cover, titled The Secret of Fire House Five, and hadn’t even opened it yet when Monica swooped it out of her hands.

  “I don’t think that one’s appropriate for someone your age, honey. There’s a branch library four blocks over; you can get some suitable material there. I’ll take you next Saturday.”

  If it was only four blocks, Katie didn’t see any need to wait a week to get something to read. She wondered what was in the red book that wasn’t appropriate and resolved to find out as soon as Monica went to work on Monday.

  Nathan collapsed in a big chair and blew smoke in Katie’s general direction. “How about a beer?” he suggested. He slung one leg over the chair arm and put the other foot on the coffee table.

  Nathan wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in Grandma Welker’s house. Katie shifted the air current so that the smoke floating toward her turned back and surrounded Nathan’s head like a miniature cloud.

  Monica brought the beer and offered Katie a glass of lemonade. It wasn’t homemade, but it tasted pretty good. Katie
moved farther away from the cloud of smoke and went on looking for something appropriate in the bookcase. After a minute Nathan said, “For pete’s sake, open a window or something. It sure is stuffy in here.”

  “Is it all right if I take this in my room and read?” Katie asked, holding up a paperback titled The Unicorn Girl.

  “Sure, honey,” Monica agreed quickly. “Unless you want to sit out here with us and watch TV.”

  “I don’t watch much TV,” Katie told her. “I can make up better stories in my head than most of those silly things.”

  She walked toward the door of the small room that was now hers and heard Nathan’s voice behind her. “What kind of kid is this one of yours, Monica? I never saw one like her before.”

  He didn’t lower his voice. He was one of those people who talk about kids as if they weren’t there or couldn’t hear. Of course, it was probably true that he’d never seen anyone like Katie. She hadn’t met anyone else like herself, either. She wished, quite sincerely, that she would.

  It was lonely, being the only one like herself.

  “I never saw eyes that color,” Nathan said behind her. “Nothing like yours. Did your husband have silver eyes?”

  “They’re not silver,” Monica said uneasily. “They are just gray. No, Joe had brown eyes.”

  “Isn’t it genetically unlikely that a brown-eyed person and a blue-eyed person would have a kid with silver eyes?”

  “Gray eyes,” Monica insisted.

  Katie closed the door so she couldn’t make out their words any more. She sprawled on the bed that felt hard and unfamiliar beneath her and opened The Unicorn Girl.

  To her intense disappointment, it wasn’t about a girl unicorn at all, it was only about a girl who could talk to unicorns. Well, maybe it would still be worth reading. It would be fun to be able to talk to unicorns, Katie thought.