Colours in Her Hands, page 27
The other residents were in their final years. Mina might be too, but she was thirty-nine, not eighty-nine. Except for noisy chewing, grumbling and gumming, silence reigned in the dining room. Hair was a variation on grey, white, dyed, or non-existent. Hands trembled. There were walkers next to the tables and against the walls. Bruno watched a man grasp his walker, struggle upright, and lean on it to creep-roll toward the elevator. It must take him the whole time between meals to travel from his room to the dining room and back again.
Mina was no athlete but she could still move. Her conversation had always been idiosyncratic, but she could have one. Faiza’s plans to jumpstart Mina’s social life in a group environment weren’t likely to amount to much here.
Bruno watched the owner of the residence deciding that Mina was a darling. Indeed, she was on her best behaviour, agreeing to all conditions, claiming to eat all foods.
The woman who’d come with the owner introduced herself as Madame Bingham. She had a jaw so remarkably cleft that she seemed to have two joined chins. She told Mina that they would be seeing a lot of each other. “Will you like that?”
“Yeah.”
“If you want to have breakfast with me, you’ll have to get up at 6:30.”
“D’okay.”
Bruno said nothing, careful to hide his incredulity. Mina never rose before 9:00.
“Do you drink coffee or tea in the morning? We have both. I’ll bring it to you myself.”
“C-c-coffee!” Mina grinned as if she’d landed in paradise.
Bruno guessed that Madame Bingham was his age. Her manner toward Mina was overseeing and maternal. Maybe even a little bossy? Good luck with that, he thought.
The meeting ended with everyone looking pleased. He wasn’t about to burst their complacent expectations. Let Mina move there. Let her get settled. Let Madame Bingham wait for her to show up for breakfast at 6:30. He had to remember to ask Faiza if the home could evict Mina once they discovered she wasn’t as good-natured as she appeared. He wondered if they’d been told the story of the door-knobs. Did they know not to leave string, hammers, money, or toilet paper lying around? Or Publisacs. When packing up Mina’s things, he’d found a heap of Publisacs disguised under a sheet to look like a pouffe in the bedroom.
He walked with Mina down the broad hallway to her hospital room. Despite her girth, her steps had always been light. A graceful waddle.
“Do you want to come with me to the cafeteria for a coffee?”
“Thé,” she reminded him.
“Right,” he said. Coffee for breakfast, tea throughout the day. He crooked his elbow for her to take. “Mina, Mina, where do you come from?”
She gave an amused, exasperated groan. He squeezed her hand against his ribs. She was his sister. He wasn’t ready to lose her yet.
In the cafeteria she tackled the muffin he set in front of her with such avidity that he asked if she was getting enough to eat.
She considered. “Soup. Patates. Meatloaf.”
“No dessert?”
“I’m dibète,” she said proudly.
He remembered the chocolate caramels he’d found in her apartment. She wouldn’t be able to cheat in the residence. That would be good for her, but it was also sad to rob her of her little rebellions.
“I know you’re starting to remember things and I wondered . . . Do you remember the stories I used to read to you?”
She didn’t answer but she watched him.
“There was one about a princess who lost her golden ball when it fell into a well.” Mina always used to trace her fingers across the drawing of the young woman with a tiny crown on her head who stared forlornly into the well. “Do you remember what happened with her ball?”
“A prince!”
“Not so fast. That wouldn’t make much of a story if the prince happened to be right there. Besides, a well is deep and full of water. What would a prince be doing down there?”
Mina’s eyes were unfocussed, as if she were watching the story at a distance.
“There was a . . .” He waited.
“F-f-frog!”
“Exactly. The frog rescued her ball. But then she had to be his friend, and he started sitting by her plate at the table and sleeping on her pillow. And she didn’t like that. So she —”
Mina raised an arm and flung the imaginary frog in a splat against the cafeteria wall.
Bruno nodded. “And then he turned into a prince.”
“Yeah!”
He wondered if it was the drama that appealed to her, or if she liked how the princess’s bad temper was ultimately rewarded.
“What about Hansel and Gretel? The brother and sister who got lost in the forest.” Not lost, he remembered. That would have been a later, romanticized version. In his book, the parents didn’t have enough food to feed the family, so they took the children into the forest and abandoned them. Authority figures were often corrupt and self-serving. The heroes were the children, the animals, the naïve, and the so-called idiots — a narrative Mina could identify with, even if she hadn’t understood it as such.
“House,” she said now. “With c-c-cookies.”
“That’s it. A house made of gingerbread cookies, and Hansel and Gretel were hungry. But the problem was that the house belonged to a . . .”
“Hexe.”
“You know the German word?” Though why was he surprised? Their mother used to talk to her in German and the stories he’d read to her were in German.
He was surprised by how happy he felt that she remembered following him into that magic world of riddles that solved mysteries, conniving wolves, straw that could be spun into gold, and fish that granted wishes. How often had they sat together, him reading out loud and her listening, leaning over the pages to see the drawings?
“There you are, Mina!” A nurse with a tray stopped at their table. “The social worker is looking for you upstairs,” she told Bruno.
He gave Mina his arm again, but her grip was heavier, her gait not as steady. When he saw an orderly rolling a clutch of empty wheelchairs down the hallway, he asked for one.
Pushing the wheelchair, looking down on Mina, he saw how she arranged her hands on her lap, making sure that the birthstone on her ring was centered and visible. She gazed along the hallway as if upon crowds from a palanquin. Her hair was black with not a glint of grey yet. She was frailer but still so very much herself. She would have supervision and be safer in a residence. He wouldn’t have to be on constant alert for whatever might happen next. That should have been a relief, but for the moment it felt complicated and unknown.
* * *
Iris wore a dress and a matching boxy jacket with wide lapels and cloth-covered buttons. First impressions were everything. She was determined to feel upbeat, even though the two art galleries she’d already visited had been failures. Not complete failures but still. The person she would have to see to discuss an exhibit wasn’t there. Did she want to make an appointment? No, she declined politely. She would return again. If she returned again. She had five galleries on her list today. She crossed her fingers, wished for three times lucky, unzipped the portfolio she carried, and swung open the door.
An elegantly dressed individual behind a large bare desk gave Iris a cool once-over. Look all you want, Iris thought. She knew that her clothes passed muster.
She hadn’t yet reached the desk when a woman in jeans and an untucked white shirt walked out from a well-lit back room that seemed to be an office. Iris made a split-second decision that she must be the owner. She had to be in order to get away with dressing so casually when she expected her employee with the movie star eyes and square shoulders to look impeccably smart.
Iris stepped forward, held out her hand, and introduced herself.
The gallerist — as she seemed to be — shook her hand but with no warmth. “Do we . . . ?”
Iris reached into her portfolio for the embroidery with a cream linen matting she’d had mounted under plexiglass. She’d practised the move so often that it was swift and confident: herself under a blazing sun, the hour high noon, the portfolio a holster, the framed embroidery a gun, its effect a bullet. She didn’t speak. Mina’s embroidery spoke best for itself.
The gallerist flicked an automatic glance, her face already set in refusal, but her eyes stayed locked. She didn’t move, then took the frame from Iris, and carried it toward a light.
Not waiting for permission, Iris lifted out the heavier book of embroideries she’d bound. The assistant, noting the owner’s acute silence, flourished a bangled wrist for Iris to place the weighted fabric pages on the desk.
The gallerist had soft, fleshy features with intent, narrow-set eyes. She swivelled her head at the soft thump and walked to the desk. Slowly Iris folded back pages. A fat paisley bubble in yellow and cream tones with a subtle orange shimmer. Emerald swirls compressed in a squat turquoise onion.
“The irregular stitching. What’s your rationale?”
Fantastic! Iris thought. She’s interested and she doesn’t even know the best part. “I don’t make these,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, though her pulse pounded in her temples. “I represent the artist, Philomena Corneau.” She paused. “Who has Down Syndrome.”
The woman’s stance shifted. Out of the corner of her eye, Iris caught the complicit widening of lashes from the other side of the desk.
“Philomena is entirely self-taught. No one tells her what colours to choose or how to stitch them. I don’t know if you’ve seen the work of Judith Scott, the internationally —”
The gallerist raised a hand for silence as she turned the pages. She stopped for a very long time, considering the vortex of jade and forest green exploding into pink that was Iris’s favourite. This was the one that would convince her!
“Who are you in relation to the artist?” The voice was cold, but Iris knew that was only a strategy. She could sense the excitement.
“Her agent.”
“How much work does she have?”
“Bags full.”
“Bags?” A moue of disgust. “Is that how you store them?”
“She kept them in bags. I’m putting them in boxes.”
“And how are they being stored?”
“I only recently discovered she had so much work. I’ll get it stored properly.” What did that entail, Iris wondered. Humidity and air control?
“Where are her family?”
“Philomena has full legal capacity.” Hadn’t Bruno often told her that Mina’s signature was binding? “But since you ask, her parents have passed away. She only has her brother and he has no interest in her textile art.” She didn’t like making Bruno sound like a boor, but in this case it was true. She wasn’t misrepresenting.
She described finding Philomena embroidering in the park and how she was immediately struck by her intuitive mastery and skill with colour. She began to visit Philomena, who created this amazing art with no seeming foresight or planning. And — so funny! — even though she was embroidering, she insisted on calling it knitting. Iris had decided not to mention the cerebral bleed. It had no bearing on her art. Philomena, the artist, was vibrant and alive.
“Who else has seen these?”
“I have several appointments,” Iris lied. “But as yet —”
“Cancel them. You will deal with me, please. I’m Ruth. My assistant is Françoise. Give her my card, Françoise.”
“Philomena hasn’t had a show yet,” Iris said.
“If she does work like this? That’s not a problem. But as I said, you deal with me. You came to me and I’m interested — very interested — but my interest is exclusive. This is between us and only us. I want that understood.”
“Agreed,” Iris said.
Jenny had told her to consider several offers before making a decision, but Ruth’s unequivocal response to Mina’s embroidery was too compelling. Iris wanted to shriek like on one of Mina’s game shows but she forced herself to stay calm and business-like.
* * *
When Gabriela stepped off the elevator on Mina’s floor, Bruno was coming down the hallway. They’d seen each other a few times now and were able to talk more easily, though so far only about Mina. She knew he’d been packing up her apartment and asked how it was going.
“Pretty well done. For better or worse. I know she’ll blame me for every single pin I didn’t keep, the dollar-store junk and clothes that didn’t even fit anymore.”
He called it junk but she heard the regret in his voice. The accumulated jumble of trinkets, figurines, stuffed animals, and cushions was Mina’s heyday — and he’d had to dismantle it.
“Oh,” she said, remembering the vivid needlework draped over her furniture and tacked to the walls. “I hope you didn’t throw away her embroidery.”
“I took most of that, even the boyfriends’ names.”
“Her princes.”
“Her princes,” he repeated. And with a grimace, “Would you believe it, she even embroidered Pierre’s name, that creep.”
“That’s —”
“I know. I threw his away.”
They said nothing for a minute. How, in Mina’s scheme of life, did a man who had assaulted her sexually rate a place on the wall? And what did that imply about the other names?
“I should go see her.” Gabriela nodded in the direction of Mina’s room. “Do you know, she knit me a cushion for my birthday? It’s gorgeous — like her embroidery — the colours so wild and deliberate.”
“A Mina special.”
“I love it. But it was odd. She stuffed it with . . .” Gabriela hesitated, unsure about mentioning things she and Bruno had done together.
He was watching her, waiting.
“Do you remember when we took her fabric shopping for curtains? Did you give her the leftover fabric because —”
“No!” he said far too loudly for a hospital corridor and an orderly pushing a trolley gave him a stern look. He told Gabriela about the disappeared curtains. Stuffing the cushion with them must have seemed the ideal solution.
“She used me!”
“Not completely. You got a cushion out of the deal.”
“I guess . . .”
“It’s all in the past now,” he said. Again that tone of regret. And with a sigh, “I should let you go see her. You’re her favourite person.”
He couldn’t mean that, Gabriela thought as he walked away. Surely he knew he was Mina’s favourite person, even if she complained about him and called him names.
* * *
There were only three steps — like at her apartment. Three was lucky! Mina grabbed the railing and hoisted herself up. One step, then the next and the next.
“Are you okay?” Bruno asked.
She knew how to do this! Even though she was puffing at the top. This was the new place she was coming to after the hospital. First, the hospital where she had been sick, and now this place until she got better, and then she could go home again.
“What do you think?” Bruno asked.
She liked that there was a carpet in the hall, but the living room they walked past was full of old people. Very old people who couldn’t do anything anymore.
A nurse walked toward them. “Hello, bonjour! How are you? En français? In English?”
Mina didn’t answer. How was she supposed to know what the nurse wanted to talk?
“She understands both,” Bruno said.
“No kidding! That’s great!”
Mina didn’t like how loud the nurse was. She didn’t like the old people sitting and doing nothing. She didn’t like the smell.
But here was Madame Bingham, bustling down the hallway, and she grasped Mina’s shoulders and gave her two big smackeroo kisses. “My new friend!” She sounded so happy that it made Mina feel happy too. “But listen, my little Minnie Mouse, I’m making a cake, so I have to get back to the kitchen. Your brother can show you your room.”
“Here’s the elevator,” Bruno said.
She knew what a levoluva was. Daddy used to fix broken levoluvas. That was his job. Why did Bruno think that he had to tell her what it was?
“You’re on the third floor. Number 3.” He pressed the button. “You’ll like it here, you have a nice room. Wait until you see.”
The levoluva was slow. The slowest she’d ever taken. The whole while Bruno kept talking. Too many words, too fast. What was wrong with him?
She followed him down a hallway of closed doors. Some had pictures or things on them. Dried flowers, words on plaques. There was still that smell she didn’t like. He stopped before a door with a poster of Elvis — exactly like the one she had on her wall at home!
“Are you ready?” He opened the door and waved her in.
Then nothing made any sense — because there was her green bedspread and cushions, her armchair, the shelves where she kept her notebooks and knitting. Even her TV? Her princes’ names on the walls? Mama’s angel over the bed?
“Wh-wh-wh —”
“You don’t have as much space here, so we couldn’t keep everything.”
“What d-d-d-d —”
“This is where you’ll be living now. I’ll come to see you here. Iris will come, maybe Gabriela, and Faiza too. She’s still going to be your social worker.”
The words wouldn’t come out, her throat was too choked with fury. She balled her fist to clobber him and he backed away.
“You knew you were moving, Mina. I told you, we all told you. You can’t live by yourself anymore. We —”
“My apartment!” she bellowed.
“It’s not your apartment anymore. I’m sorry, Mina, I’m sorry.”
“My lease!”
“The lease is gone. We’ve explained it to you over and over. You can’t live by yourself anymore. Shit, I knew you didn’t understand! You’ll fall down again and no one will find you till it’s too late.”
“My th-th-things!” she shrieked with so much force that her voice cracked.
