"No, you're doing fine," Eleni reassured her. "Besides, if you faint, you'll drop the camera, and what will your father say then?"
Though this didn't make a whole lot of sense, it seemed to be what Betsy needed to hear: some reason not to faint. She tightened her grip on the big, boxy camera she was holding, and her breathing became less quavery.
Just as I was thinking it really was time to stop this lying-down-in-the-street business, I was aware of someone crouching down beside us, and a male voice asked, "Did the car hit her?"
"I don't think so," Eleni said at the same time I sat up and said, "No."
It was the man with the bad suit, and he tried to hand me a stick.
Which made so little sense, I squinted to bring it into my seeing range. I recognized the object was not a stick but a piece of plastic, jagged at one end as though broken, with the other end curved. Something like, I thought, the earpiece of a pair of glasses.
"Damn!" I said.
Betsy gasped, "Golly!" Eleni looked shocked, like she'd never heard someone actually speak that word before.
The man looked disapproving but still spoke gently: "I'm afraid this is the biggest piece that's left of your glasses."
"I can't see anything without them!" I said. Which included, of course, the archway that had gotten me here. Not that I knew where here was, but obviously I'd done something wrong, so I needed to go back around and try again.
Thank you, Larry. Thank you very much. "It transports you where you want to go." Yeah, right, you little blue freak.
What I WANTED was to go home.
Though Eleni tried to make me stay put, saying, "Maybe you should just—" I got to my feet. My jeans had ripped at both knees, and my right knee was bleeding, though not emergency-room-quantity bleeding. And the palms of my hands stung. They were scraped and had gravel embedded in them. None of that stopped me from jumping back up onto the sidewalk and looking for the gate.
Nothing.
From either direction.
Of course not. I needed my special glasses to see such things.
I tried stepping through where the arch had been, at the edge of the curb. Home, home, home, I thought, picturing my own room.
Nothing.
I tried stepping through with my eyes closed, thinking maybe not seeing the wrong reality might somehow affect something—or some such: How was I supposed to know how magic worked? Hey, I was desperate.
Bad-Suit Man caught me when I nearly toppled off the curb again.
"Is she all right?" asked one of the bystanders, maybe the woman with the child, too far away for me to make out now, with my limited eyesight.
"I'm fine," I insisted, sounding more snappish than I intended. I headed farther into the street without even looking, so it was a good thing it wasn't a busy street and the few cars on it had all stopped at my recent near-accident. I figured the occupants were still watching, maybe expecting a delayed-reaction fatality.
I found one lens, which was all cracked, but I thought maybe it would still let me see well enough to find the elusive archway. But when I went to pick it up, the pieces fell loose, pieces about as big as shredded carrots in a salad. I searched for the other lens but couldn't find it.
The girl who had rescued me came up behind, putting one hand on my shoulder and taking hold of my opposite elbow with the other. "Why don't you sit down on this nice lady's porch?" she suggested, pulling me out of the street into someone's yard.
An old woman with gray hair that had a definite tinge of blue to it and who was wearing a housedress (no hat, the anal-retentive part of me noted) held open the screen door to her house. But my knees were going all shaky on me, and I wouldn't make it that far. I sat down heavily on the concrete step outside.
"I've called for an ambulance," the old lady said. "Did the car hit her? Is that a piece of metal sticking out of her?"
I remembered the accident victim I'd seen, long, long ago this morning, patting his chest, asking, "Is the steering wheel column sticking out again?" and I wondered if I was in shock and only thought the car had missed me. The old woman was close enough that, by squinting, I could see where her eyes were looking.
"Holy moley," Eleni muttered. Anticipating seeing the car's fender sticking out of my abdomen, I checked—but it was only my belly-button ring. I tugged my shirt down over the top of my jeans.
"I don't need an ambulance," I told everyone. I rested my face in my hands. How could I ever get home if I couldn't see the way? What was the matter with that mini-munchkin-gone-bad Larry, not giving me better instructions? "Larry?" I called. Had he come through with me? "Larry, if you're here, you come out this instant."
"Who's Larry?" Eleni asked.
If my jeans and my belly-button ring were getting weird looks, talking about little blue guys was sure to get me committed. "Nobody," I assured her.
"Let me get you a washcloth for your poor head," the old woman said.
"I don't need one," I told her.
Betsy, who had joined us from across the street, murmured, "I could use a cold cloth, please," and she followed the old woman back into the house.
Because I hate to wear glasses, over the years I've gotten good at extrapolating things about my surroundings without the benefit of actually seeing much. I was aware of a small crowd at the edge of the old lady's yard, with one person significantly shorter than the others—probably the little girl I'd glimpsed before. It had just struck me that the murmur of their voices sounded more disapproving than sympathetic, when the child's shrill voice raised above the others, demanding, "Mommy, why is she dressed so funny?"
There were some titters from the crowd.
The answer, while still rather quiet, was louder than the previous murmuring had been. Louder and disapproving: "I don't know, honey. Maybe she's a farmworker."
Like anyone would wear Abercrombie jeans to work on a farm.
Encouraged by the obvious amusement of her elders, the little girl said, "Her pants are so tight, if she bent over to feed the chickens, she'd bust right out of them."
More tittering.
Any mother-daughter team wearing white gloves and hats outside of an Easter parade should not consider themselves the fashion police, but—being stranded here—I didn't have the heart or energy to tell them what I thought of them.
Eleni, however, went to the fence. I heard her coo, "My, what a lovely little girl you have there, ma'am." Then, just as sweetly, she asked, "Do you ever plan to teach her human kindness, or were you intending on raising a poisonous little hyena?"
This did not endear her to them nearly as much as it did to me.
The mother spoke to her child, saying, "These are both obviously bad girls, dear," and she tugged on her child's arm and dragged her away.
Eleni put her hands on her hips, and the rest of the crowd dispersed, obviously unwilling to risk her turning her wrath onto any of them.
Even Mr. Tweed-Suit Man, who had crossed back over to this side of the street again, was heading for the corner when Eleni called him back, demanding, "What if we need you?"
He returned, opened his satchel, and handed me a card.
I squinted and read:
BUZZ A. TINNELL
FULLER BRUSH SALESMAN
TELEPHONE NUMBER:IDLEWILD 6-0296
Things were weird, but I was perplexed at just how weird. I looked from Eleni to the man and asked, "You want me to buy a brush?"
Eleni took the card and tucked it into a pocket of her gauzy summer dress. "This is if you need another witness, an adult."
Well, that clarification didn't help a whole lot.
she gestured down the street. "To testify that that driver never even stopped to see if you were hurt."
Okay, then. But that was not number one on my list of worries.
I was aware of Eleni sitting down on the stoop next to me. "I'll stay with you," she assured me, which I realized meant the salesman had left as soon as I wasn't looking, eager to be about his Fuller-Brushing wher
e there were no delusional accident victims or sharp-tongued rescuers.
I had my head in my hands again, so all I could see was the bottom part of my rescuer's leg, with her dress billowing around her feet. she was wearing high heels. I was thinking about telling her that she shouldn't be sitting on the concrete step in her good clothes when finally I recognized the blue and white striped dress—one of a kind, handmade in Italy.
Finally I took a good look at her face.
And finally I recognized that, too.
Despite the wrong name, Eleni was my grandmother.
14. In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Larry had said the arch would transport me to where I wanted to go, and I had gone and let my mind wander for an instant—as though picturing Gia and Nana sitting together looking at the photo album wasn't reckless enough—to picturing the photos themselves. Which is not to say it wasn't Larry's fault that I ended up smack in the 1950s.
"Larry, you ought to be flushed down a toilet," I muttered.
Eleni—Nana—raised her eyebrows at me. Her dark-colored, young eyebrows. Nana's name was Helen, not Eleni, but how could I not have recognized her? I'd seen pictures of her as a child and as a young woman, but I always thought of Nana as she'd always looked to me. Now here she was with her skin un-wrinkled; her shoulder-length hair bouncy and dark rather than in the short, permed, and gray style which was all I'd ever known; and she was slim, though for as long back as I could remember, she'd always been a bit ... roundish. The aides at the nursing home were always saying how attractive she'd been as a young woman, but—as much as I loved her—to me she was attractive in a grandmotherly way, not as the kind of girl who would turn heads at her high school. Yet here she was every bit as gorgeous as Tiffanie Mills—and I mean on one of Tiffanie's good days.
Now, my young grandmother was looking at me with worry in her eyes, and she assured me, "Help will be here soon."
"I don't need help," I told her. Well, I did, but not the kind she meant. I could hear the faintest wail of a siren approaching. That was the last thing I needed: to be taken off to a hospital, to have people start asking questions. I scrambled to my feet. "I've got to get out of here," I said.
"No, it's okay," Eleni said. she tugged on my arm to try to get me to sit down again. "The ambulance will be here in another two minutes."
Which was exactly the point.
Eleni seemed to realize that. She tipped her head and looked at me quizzically. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"I've got to get out of here," I repeated.
Again the eyebrows went up. But what she asked was, "Are you sure? You may well have hit your head when you fell, and someone should take a look at that knee in case you need stitches."
She must have seen my answer in my expression.
"Well," she said, "obviously I can't just let you run off all alone after that brush with death," which sounded like the prelude to an argument with me. But instead, she swept to her feet. "Come on this way, then." She took my arm and hustled me down the front path to the sidewalk.
"Doing all right?" she asked, and—when I nodded—she led me down the street, around the corner, down another street, around another corner. Her heels made a rapid click, click, click on the sidewalk, a sound that brought back memories of when I'd been much younger and she'd been well and active, a sound I associated with her, because I pretty much live in sneakers and my mother wears flats—my father as well as her current husband being on the short side. Despite her heels, it was me, with my sore knee, who had trouble keeping up.
"There's a little park on the next block," Eleni said.
It was the first time I realized where we were, since the park—one of those urban, one-block affairs with a few trees, two benches, one drinking fountain, and a statue of some Civil War guy—is still there today, three blocks from where Nana used to live. Which, by the way—thank you very much, Larry—is nowhere near Westfall Nursing Home.
"Sure, I remember this place," I said, squinting as I looked around, and had the sense not to add, You used to bring me here when I was a little kid.
Eleni sat me down on one of the benches, then tugged at the hole in my jeans to get a peek at my knee. "I think," she told me, "once you stop moving, it'll stop bleeding." She gave me an of-course-that-is-not-to-say-I-approve look. From her pocket, she got a handkerchief—not a tissue, but an embroidered cloth handkerchief—which she proclaimed as being "mostly clean," and went to moisten it at the fountain.
As soon as she was out of hearing, I whispered fiercely, "Larry!" No answer. Of course, without my glasses I wouldn't be able to see him or—as part of the weirdness of those glasses—to hear him, but that didn't mean he couldn't make his toxic little presence known. "Larry, you better get that little blue butt of yours out here immediately," I said.
Eleni cleared her throat, making me jump, since I hadn't been aware of her returning, and she sat down beside me. But maybe she hadn't heard me after all, because she didn't comment and only concentrated on my knee. "This will need better looking after," she told me sternly as she picked gravel out of the wound.
It stung like crazy, but I figured that was the least of my worries.
"Are you sure you didn't strike your head?" she asked me.
"Positive," I assured her. "If I'm acting a bit like a spaz, it's only because I can't see much without my glasses."
She glanced up at me, but I couldn't tell what I'd said wrong. "Uh-huh," she said, not sounding at all convinced. Then she said, "Well, so let me introduce myself: My name is Eleni."
"Eleni," I repeated. I was supposed to call my nana "Eleni"?
She grinned. "Well, actually it's Helen, but 'Eleni' is the Greek way of saying it."
"But we're not Greek," I blurted before catching myself.
Luckily, she must have assumed I meant "we" as a nation rather than "we" as a family, or maybe she just figured I meant to say "you." She shrugged and said, "Helen is ... well, honestly, it's a grandmother's name."
I tried not to choke. The one thing it showed was that I was not the only one in my family who would have preferred a sexy name. I wondered if there was a Greek equivalent to "Wendy" and guessed probably not.
"So," she prompted. "And you are...?"
We were on dangerous ground. What if I did or said something that changed history? Hello. I'm Wendy, and I'm your granddaughter, and I accidentally came back to the 1950s, and now I'm looking for a way back. It might be enough to scare her out of ever having children, and then I'd never be born.
I'd already hesitated too long to just make something up, and she was looking at my T-shirt, emblazoned with the Nike name and trademark swoosh. "Nick," she misread, then corrected it to "Nike," saying it with only one syllable, to rhyme with "like." "Surely that's not your name?"
"No," I admitted.
She waited another moment. "Hit your head and can't remember, or don't want to say?"
"I'd like to tell you"—I couldn't bring myself to call Nana "Eleni"—"but I can't."
"Okay," she said agreeably. "A secret is better than not being able to remember. If you couldn't remember, I'd have to get help whether you wanted me to or not. But I can't just call you 'Hey you' or 'Nike.'"
While I tried to think of something, she suggested, "How about 'Jeannette'?"
My mother's name. I remembered how that had been the first serious sign of her Alzheimer's—when she couldn't keep me and my mother straight. I tried to keep my voice neutral as I asked, "Why 'Jeannette'?"
Eleni shrugged. "I've always liked the name. Kind of French, but not too much. I have a stuffed bear named Jeannette. Actually, if I ever get married, I plan to name my first child Jeannette, so I'm really hoping it'll be a daughter and not a son."
I had to laugh.
"There, then. It's settled. So, I'm assuming, Jeannette, that you don't want me to contact the police and tell them about the man who almost ran you down?"
"I'm the dork who fell off the curb," I said.
I guessed by the long look she gave me that there weren't dorks in the 1950s. Or, more likely, there were, but they were called something else. "Well," she countered, "but he should have stopped."
"Besides," I said, "all I could say was that it was a big gray car. That's not much to go on, but I don't know cars. I can't even keep straight which is a van and which is an SUV."
From her somewhat dazed expression, I gathered at least one or the other of those had not yet been invented.
"Oldsmobile," Eleni finally said. "The hood ornament is quite distinctive. License number M13487."
To fill in the silence, I said, "I can't see much without my glasses."
She nodded as if saying, Okay, well, I'll buy that for now.
"How can you remember the number?"
"M for Monroe County, then 1 because he was so self-centered and was only thinking of himself; 3—that's you, me, and Betsy; add all those numbers together to get 4; add all the numbers so far together to get 8; but the driver took off, so you subtract the first number from the last number to get 7: M13487."
This game with numbers from the grandmother who could no longer remember her own name.
"You know," I said, "I don't even know what you just said."
She shrugged.
"Anyway," I repeated, "it was my own fault."
"And you don't want to involve the police," she guessed.
I didn't say anything because there was nothing to say.
"Are you in trouble," she asked, "or is it your friend, Larry?"
Being of quick mind and sharp wit, I said, "Huh?"
"Because I will tell you something," Eleni said, "Betsy was taking a picture of me"—she gave a dismissive wave of her hand, and blushed as she explained all in a rush—"because she wants to send a picture of me to her cousin so that he'll come here for August and stay with her parents rather than going to his other aunt and uncle in Sodus before he enlists in the army..." She hesitated, obviously embarrassed at the thought of using her picture to tempt a young man into summering in Rochester—and meanwhile I tried not to wonder if the young man in question was Papa: What I did not need to do was to influence anything that had already happened. "Anyway," she continued, "so Betsy was facing me, and I was facing the spot where you..." She hesitated again, this time groping for the right words. "The spot where one second you weren't. And then you were."