WEDNESDAY'S CHILD

By Constance Smith

 

 

Her grandmother said that because she was born on a Wednesday, she was full of woe. Gina tried to imagine how that must feel, having a sadness inside you so great that you are full of it, like when you eat too much of something and it hurts.

 

She lay on the floor in her grandparents’ living room. Her mother said the house was tacky, but Gina liked the kidney-bean coffee table and dusty plaid curtains. On her back, nestled in the soft green yarn of the shag rug, she watched her own stomach rise and fall beneath her t-shirt. She puffed out her stomach, pretending to bloat up with woe, but she felt strangely empty rather than full and exhaled loudly. Gina was alone until her grandfather shuffled in to watch TV. He wore a thin red bathrobe over slacks and held a can of Coke in his dry, knotted hand. His pinky, permanently askew from the other, more obedient fingers, did not touch the can. When asked about it he would shrug and say it just froze up ten years ago. Gina thought maybe fewer people would notice his hooked pinky if he drank from Grandma’s delicate teacups rather than straight cans of Coke and beer. The wine glasses looked better, but still not right.

 

“What are you doing?” Leonard stood over his granddaughter and took a sharp sip of his cola.

 

“Nothing.”

 

Gina sat up as the TV came on. Leonard lay down on the sofa with the remote. It was too loud and too boring, so she left.

 

Gina’s grandmother was sitting at the dining room table with the newspaper and the single cup of coffee that she would sip forever. Gina knew that coffee was always cold by the time her grandmother finished it, but since it took Esther so long to get up out of her chair and walk the few feet to kitchen it wasn’t worth the effort. Sometimes she would ask Gina to bring it to the microwave if she walked by at the right moment. Gina also knew that it was the obituaries section her grandmother had neatly folded open in front of her. She always read this last, letting it linger with the coffee.

 

Gina pulled up a chair and began peeling an orange from the glass bowl in the middle of the table. The slamming of cabinets in the kitchen signaled that Leonard had also left the living room.

 

“Leonard?”

 

Slam.

 

“Leonard, Arthur Chapman died.”

 

Slam.

 

“Arthur and your grandfather used to play golf together,” Esther told Gina.

 

Gina nodded, though she could not imagine her grandfather playing golf.

 

Slam.

 

“Leonard, what are you looking for?” Esther called. “He’s always looking for something.”

 

Having replaced the Coke with a cup of coffee, Leonard padded into the dining room and picked up the obituaries.

 

“Arthur Chapman died,” he said evenly.

 

“I know. He was a nice man.”

 

Gina split her peeled orange in half, quartered it, and separated out all the individual pieces before she started eating.

 

“Pull out my chair, please, Leonard.” Slowly, Leonard moved the chair and helped his wife up, guiding her elbow with his good hand. These were the rare moments Gina saw them touch.

 

“Remember that your mom is coming tomorrow to pick you up, Gina. Have you packed?”

 

“Not yet. Can I see your old dresses again?”

 

“Yes, but then you pack, okay?”

 

“Beth’s coming tomorrow?” Leonard put his fists into the pockets of his robe.

 

“She’s picking up Gina.”

 

“She shouldn’t be telling us what to do. She’s our daughter. She can’t tell us what to do.”

 

Esther sighed.

 

“She’s just worried. She wants what’s best.” Esther put one hand on Gina’s back, leading her toward the back bedroom, leaning on her just a little. Her hand was cool and soft and Gina could feel the tips of the nails which Ester filed into perfect ovals.

 

“I know what’s best for us. We are staying in this house,” Leonard insisted. He stood in the hallway, defiant, unshaven and slightly drunk from the scotch in his coffee.

 

Esther first showed Gina a red velvet party dress and matching cloak and told her that it was what she was wearing when she met Leonard, at a Christmas party in St. Joseph in 1946. She sat in a chair next to the closet and told Gina what to take out. Gina tried on the cloak and walked around, the bottom half dragging on the carpet.

 

“I used to be very tall, taller than all my friends,” Esther said, watching the velvet trail behind her granddaughter’s feet like a wedding train.

 

“Do you think I’ll be as tall as you, Nana?” Gina stopped in front of the mirror.

 

“Maybe. Do you want to see my costume jewelry?”

 

Esther opened a drawer in the dresser behind her and extracted a large wooden box. She rifled through it and put a long strand of pearls around her neck. Admiring them, she patted the beads against her blouse. Gina thought her grandmother looked very elegant with jewelry on and she liked how her white, permed hair curled around her face like a big flower. When Gina’s mom stayed at home for the day she wore sweatpants and no make-up; Esther always looked ready for something fancy even though she never went anywhere.

 

Gina shuffled over to the dresser to sift through the treasures and selected a bracelet with blue glass beads which she thought sapphires might look like.

 

“You start fourth grade in a couple of weeks, don’t you?”

 

Gina nodded and held out her wrist for Esther to do the clasp.

 

“Are you excited?”

 

“No. Everyone likes the first day of school. But I don’t.”

 

“Starting fresh is nice though, even if it’s scary.”

 

Gina shrugged and took off the bracelet.

 

“It’s better when things stay the same though.”

 

Esther nodded and helped Gina take off the cloak. Her grandmother’s rigid fingers moved slowly at releasing the broach clasp at Gina’s neck. Gina grew impatient, the cloak felt suddenly very heavy on her shoulders. When she was free, Esther told her it was time to pack.

 

When Gina came to visit she stayed in her mother’s old room. Beth said nothing had changed since she’d gone to college, yet Gina couldn’t imagine a little girl ever having lived here. The walls had been painted pale yellow over twenty years ago, and everything else in room had faded to match. The long gauzy curtains and the bedspread were dusty and the posters were brittle and crumbled when Gina touched them. The room smelled like the back room of her school’s library, the one no one used.

 

The suitcase her mom had packed lay open on the rug next to the bed. Only half the clothes had been worn and were scattered across the floor. Esther never came to this room because it was too far down the hall to walk to, so no one ever told her to pick up or clean up or tidy up. Here Gina could do whatever she wanted and it was always quiet. She often read her mother’s old books and now she lay down with a hardcover Nancy Drew, one of the ones with the old-fashioned illustrations. On the cover Nancy held a flashlight, apparently looking for something. She wore a knee-length skirt and a sweater and her blonde hair flipped out at the ends, the way Gina imagined her grandmother used to look. Gina knew she would not look like this when she was thirteen, or even sixteen. Her hair was dark and thin and flat. She had tried to brush a flip into it and even asked her mother to try. Her mother had laughed and stroked Gina’s head playfully with her fingers. What a silly thing to ask for, she said. No one wears their hair like that anymore.

 

Her mother was coming tomorrow; Gina knew it wouldn’t be quiet then because her mother would fight with her grandfather. Her mother said her parents needed to move out of their home because they were too old and because her grandfather was sad all the time. Last time, Leonard yelled at Beth because she took away the key to his Buick. He’d backed the car into the mailbox. Then Gina found him on the floor of the den. There was broken glass and a purple stain on the floor. He didn’t see her come in and she had left as quietly as she could. That was at Easter.

 

         Gina opened her Nancy Drew to her bookmark. She had only two chapters left and wanted to finish before she had to go home. Esther said she could take home whatever she wanted from Beth’s room, but Gina thought these things belonged here.

 

         Gina heard the shuffle of slippers on wood floors and knew from the pace that her grandfather was walking down the hall. She sat up and closed her book.

 

          Leonard came into his daughter’s old bedroom, a room he had not seen for years. His robe had fallen open, the knot in the sash hung loosely at his knees. Above his pants his pale, sallow chest was bare. Gina felt ashamed to see him exposed. His stubbled jaw was clenched and his gray, watery eyes were wide; Gina realized he was afraid. She felt scared too.

 

          “Gina. Your grandmother fell.”

 

         “Grandma?”

 

          “I need you to help me.” Gina didn’t want to look at her grandfather. The way he stood in the doorway, stiff and helpless, made her want to cry. He didn’t even know that his robe was falling off. Gina remembered what her mother had told her, what her school had told her.

 

         “Call 911,” she whispered.

 

          Leonard’s hands jerked at his sides.

 

         “No. Hospitals,” the old man choked. He began to cough, and brought his bad hand, the one with the crooked pinky, to the doorframe to support himself. “Essy will be fine.”

 

          His sour wheezing grew louder, trapping Gina. She wondered where her grandmother was – in the kitchen? Bathroom? Gina drew her hands under her legs. She tried to become very still, like she did at night sometimes when she was afraid. She would imagine that if she didn’t move or breathe, then fear could not get inside her body, that it would break over her like a wave. As she became silent, Leonard’s breaths sounded louder and more painful.

 

          “I need your help,” he repeated, finally, with difficulty.

 

         Gina began to cry. Crying forced her to breathe again, and motion returned to her body. Her tears startled Leonard, and as he turned and left the room, Gina followed.

 

          Slippers scraping against the floor, Leonard made his way slowly down the hall. Gina was right behind him, but as she looked at the red back of his robe, the white fold in the back of his neck, the bareness of his bald skull, he seemed very far away from her. He led her through the back bedroom, finally stopping in their private bathroom, which Gina had rarely seen and never used. First she saw the walls. Several thick metal handles and railings had been installed, which made the room feel clinical and sterile. Gina saw her grandmother on the floor. Half sitting, half lying against the bathtub, she held her upper body up with one of the support rails. She wore a blue and white floral bathrobe, which she had modestly tucked around her legs after her fall. But her feet were exposed, bare, pale, almost blue, and the skin on her heels was cracked. Her toenails were ugly and yellow, not smooth like her manicured fingers. Esther lifted her head when she heard them come in. Her wilted perm was squashed on one side.

 

          “Hi Darling,” she said shyly. “This bath turned out to be a lot more trouble than it was worth.”

 

         “Are you okay, Grandma?”

 

          “Getting up seems to be a problem.”

 

         Leonard stepped out of the bathroom and paced back and forth on the carpet.

 

         “Can you get up, Grandma? Can you try?”

 

          “I tried. Your grandfather tried to help me. I guess I’m not as light as I used to be.”

 

          Gina crouched on the slick, white bathroom tiles, and put her hand on her grandmother’s arm, on the loose flesh just above the elbow. Her skin was like tissue paper, and cool from all the tiles and metal. Gina braced her other hand on the handicap bar.

 

         “Okay, Grandma,” she whispered. “Please.”

 

          The girl pulled hard, trying to raise the old woman off the floor, but Esther did not have the muscle in her legs to draw her legs underneath her. She had no strength. Gina released her arm and together they surrendered to the floor. Down the hall, in the kitchen they heard the faint slams of the cabinets. Gina wrapped her thin arms around Esther’s soft waist and listened to her shallow breaths. With her cheek to Esther’s chest, Gina felt the frail density of her grandmother, how time compresses the body, disintegrating organs and bone.

 

         “You’re going to have to call someone to help, Gina. I think I may have hurt my hip.”

 

         “911?”

 

          Esther nodded. “But call your mother first. She should know what’s going on.”

 

          “Grandpa said I shouldn’t.”

 

         “I know. He’s afraid. Much more than you are. So you have to call, okay?”

 

         Gina said okay, and left her grandmother reclining on the cold tile, quiet and resigned. As her daughter’s little girl walked away, alone and purposeful, Esther sighed. There would be a stretcher, and she would have to lie on it like a corpse and be carted away.

 

          The only phone in her grandparents’ house was in the kitchen. The phone had a rotary dial and when Gina was younger, Esther would sometimes unplug it and let her play with it. Gina would put her small fingertips in the round grooves and pull the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4. She would pretend to call Cinderella, even the president.

 

         Now she occasionally talked on the phone when her grandmother handed it to her and told her to say hello to Uncle Earl, or her friend Cleo, or her mother. But Gina had never made a real phone call on that phone before.

 

         When she reached the kitchen, Leonard was there. He stood in front of the liquor cabinet with a mug in his hand. Still untied, the robe hung open against his ashen chest. The rigid tendons in his neck directed upward to his ruddy, clenched jaw.

 

         “Did you help her?”

 

Leonard searched for his granddaughter’s eyes, but she looked at the phone. It sat on the counter between them. Gina held her arms tight around her and stepped toward the counter.

 

“You are not calling the hospital.”

 

Leonard spoke deliberately, but his eyes were glassy and unfocused and he didn’t move from his place. Gina met his eyes as she picked up the phone. 1, 2, 3, 4, she thought as she dialed her home phone number. She pictured her mother in her sweatpants, standing in their own kitchen, making coffee. She willed her to pick up.

 

“Hello?”

 

Gina knew the ambulance would come. Her mother would get in the car now. She would be here in five hours. Her grandmother would go to the hospital, and Gina would go home.

 

 

         Author’s Bio: Constance Smith is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University, where she studied English and photography. She lives in San Francisco.