Dancing with Rembrandt

ONE-3

“You’re talking funny again, mommy.”

“Someday I’ll teach you French, and you’ll understand me.”

“I will never understand you, mommy.”

“Why?”

“Because then I will talk funny.”

The young mother smiled, grateful for the conversation, for it took her mind off of the impending homelessness that competed with other negative consequences torturing her and Allie in their immediate futures.

Hannah reached Lawrence Avenue, a shortcut to the hotel along warehouses and wharves interconnected with dense forests. The rain and wind seemed to diminish to a point that Hannah started to relax. “We’re going to be fine,” she muttered, giving herself courage to surmount the storm.

“Are we there yet?” sprang a voice from the back seat.

Hannah smiled. “Almost.”

Suddenly, Hannah heard a cracking noise, and a rush of wind unlike any of the sounds that the storm had produced. From the headlights shining forward from the old Ford, she saw branches of a gigantic tree rushing toward her in an unavoidable burst of speed. Hannah shrieked as she pounded on the brakes to avert the tree. She watched in horror as a branch fell in slow motion, landing upon the hood of her car. She screamed when the branch impacted the vehicle, watching helplessly as the agonizing slow motion tumult of the branch crushed the hood, bringing the car to a bone-shattering stop. Her head marched forward in an inalterable course toward the steering wheel.

Hannah awoke, not knowing if moments or hours had passed. She rubbed her head from the impact with the steering wheel. She remembered her passenger in the back seat.

“Allie, are you hurt?” she called out.

Only silence emerged from the back seat of the crushed car.

“Allie! Allie! Allie!” Ignoring her throbbing head, Hannah screamed as she struggled to rip off her seat belt. A large branch had penetrated the passenger cabin. Wooden shards, tiny glass fragments, and small branches littered the front passenger seat. She grasped through the leaves, shouting at Allie in the back seat, while desperately grabbing at what remained of the front seat in an effort to find her cellphone. Her fingers grappled with something familiar as she slowly recognized that her cellphone had shattered from the impact with a tributary branch. She screamed in the direction of the back seat. Hannah extricated herself from the seatbelt. She examined the back seat, and saw her daughter, sound asleep, spared from any injury.

The wind began to howl again. The trees swung precariously in the wind. The rain began pouring from the sky. Singularly focused upon finding shelter for Allie, Hannah awkwardly groped through the darkness to unfasten the child restraints, keeping constant watch of the fury surrounding her from the raging wind and torrential rain. Her head throbbed. Her knee was sore from contact with the dashboard. She stuffed her pain away as she pulled her daughter to her chest. She ran through the trees that whipped helplessly overhead from the wind. She listened to the cacophony of the wind and feared the unpredictability of the next tree falling. Hannah looked around as she wrapped her coat around her child, seeking a house or a barn or a light signaling a refuge from the storm. Off in the distance, near the river, a shimmering light flickered through the tree branches waving in the wind. Hannah followed the light, noticing a gravel road that led to a warehouse on a pier. She detected that an enormous tree branch had sheared off part of the wall of the warehouse and had ripped a gate in its wake. The gate pounded a post in the torment of the wind. Razor wire danced like silvery serpents in the tempestuous wind, but Hannah determined to make her way toward the warehouse, optimistic that she would avoid the sharp prongs of the wires. She carried Allie through the wind and the rain to the hole in the wall of the warehouse. She steadied herself on the branch that penetrated the building, then pulled herself and her child inside the warehouse.

Darkness engulfed the two intruders. The wind outside muted to a forbidding echo. Hannah followed a route through a series of doors that led through the dark warehouse. She came upon an open door to a room that she guessed was a break room or a kitchen. She shut the door behind her and her daughter, and made a path to the refrigerator in the room. “Are you hungry?” she asked Allie.

“Yes,” she said, putting the tootsie pop in her pocket.

Hannah rummaged around the refrigerator and found a sandwich, some cheese, a package of yoghurt and some bottled water on the top shelf. She didn’t bother examining the lower shelves. Hannah pulled Allie to a seat at the table in the little room. “Let’s eat and then we will go to sleep, because it is very late, Allie.”

“Ok,” replied Allie.

Hannah looked around the room. She found a cabinet that held some silverware in plastic trays. Next, she spied a flashlight laying on a counter, next to the cabinet. She noticed some coats hanging on hooks on a panel across from the silverware cabinet.

“Let’s put this coat on you.”

“No, mommy. I want my coat.”

“This coat is fine, Allie.”

“But I want my coat.”

“Allie, this coat will dry you off, so you can get warm.”

“My coat makes me warmer.”

Arguing with her daughter was pointless. She decided to invoke a sympathy theorem. “If mommy goes outside to get your coat, the wind will blow mommy away.”

“But it didn’t blow you away when you runned in here.”

“Ran, Allie. I ran in here.”

“You didn’t blow away when you ran in here,” corrected her child.

“But I was carrying you, Allie.”

Allie appeared convinced. She reached for the coat in Hannah’s hand.

“I’m going to look around here to see if I can find us a place to sleep.” Hannah placed the food and silverware in front of her child.

“But, what about eating?”

Hannah pulled the top off of the yoghurt. “You start eating, and I’ll come right back.”

“I will leave you some, mommy.”

Hannah ran her fingers delicately through Allie's hair. “You stay here, Allie, while I look around.” Allie nodded as she eagerly ate the yoghurt. Hannah went out of the room to explore. Next to the kitchen, Hannah entered a room with a window facing the river. She surmised that the room belonged to the supervisor of the building, judging from a large wooden table, file cabinets, lamps, and piles of documents stacked in a method known only to the person who sat at that particular desk. To her delight, she discovered a sofa in a corner of the room, across from a heavy wooden desk.

This room, and its condition, reminded her of her father’s office in a shipping warehouse on Swan Island. She recalled accompanying her father to work when she was a little girl. He had always made her feel special as she carried maps and files and documents around his office. But times had changed.

Hannah returned to the kitchen. Finding Allie finishing her sandwich, she wiped the crumbs from her face, and stroked her hair. “I found us a place to sleep, Allie. Follow me.”

“But, Mommy,” exclaimed her child, “I have to brush my teeth.”

Hannah smiled. “We will get the toothbrushes from the car tomorrow, Allie.”

“But I don’t want tooth decay, mommy.” Allie stomped her foot on the linoleum tile covering the floor. “I want my toothbrush!”

A stand-off in the middle of the night, during a ferocious storm, with a tired child, did not enthuse Hannah. Instead of an argument, Hannah took a deep breath, and calculated a new angle. She strolled calmly to the refrigerator. As she opened the door, she glanced at the disputatious child. “I think I saw some tooth decay preventer in this refrigerator, Allie.”

“But I want my toothbrush.”

Hannah perused the Tupperware containers, bottles of catsup, containers of pickles and a few moldy items in some plastic buckets and casks. She made a point of making as much noise as possible, clinking bottles and clacking containers. She peered at her child, now silently watching her fumble through the refrigerator. “Just what I was looking for,” said Hannah with a smile. “A little bottle of tooth decay preventer.” She showed the bottle to Allie. “Now, all I need is a spoon.”

Allie leapt toward a cabinet. “I saw one in here,” she said, as she pulled one open to reveal the small collection of silverware.

“Shall we take this one?” asked Hannah, pulling out a small spoon.

“No, mommy,” argued the child. “I want this one.” She held aloft a tablespoon.

“Is it going to fit?”

Allie shook her head. “You always say I have a big mouth, mommy.”

Hannah stifled a laugh, not wanting to destroy the illusion of seriousness. “That big spoon will do nicely, Allie. This medicine will chase away a lot of tooth decay.”

Allie suddenly changed her attitude. With a beaming smile, she whispered, “you’re funny.”

Hannah carried the bottle to the drawer from which the spoon had emerged. She rustled through the silverware, making as much noise as she could, in search of the perfect implement.

“What kind of medicine is that, mommy?”

Hannah pulled out a metal apparatus, continuing to make as much noise as possible, and attached it to the cap of the bottle. “This medicine is called ale.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“I know, honey, but it’s a short name for a fermented beverage containing hops that conquers tooth decay.”

“That’s a long name.”

“Which is why we call it ale.” Hannah set the opener underneath the cap. When she pulled, the cap exploded off the bottle, producing a stream of frothy liquid lurching from the opening.

Allie squealed with delight. “That medicine makes bubbles!”

Hannah smiled. “That’s what scrubs off the tooth decay, honey.” She poured a tablespoon for her daughter. “Now drink some of this medicine. It will scrub your teeth, and help you to sleep.” She watched Allie contort her face as the cold liquid rolled in her mouth.

Hannah brought the bottle directly to her lips, drawing in a gulp of the ale. The cool bubbles soothed her mouth. She felt the cold droplets course along her tongue and down her throat.

“Why don’t you use the spoon?” interrupted Allie, jolting Hannah from the sensation of the ale.

“My mouth is bigger than your mouth, sweetie.”

Allie rubbed her eyes. “I’m ready for bed.”

“Me, too.”

Hannah held on to the bottle of ale in one hand, and took her child by the other hand, leading her to the sofa in the supervisor’s room next door. She lay her child on the sofa, and covered her with some coats that she took from the rack.

“Go to sleep, Allie.” She stroked the forehead of her daughter while humming a lullaby until sleep quickly overtook her child. She listened to the gentle rhythmic humming of her daughter’s breath, continuing to stroke Allie’s forehead. Tiny sips of ale grew into large gulps of ale as Hannah desperately sought some temporary relief. The ale brought some respite, blurring for a moment the haunting memories of the last twenty-four hours.

Garnished bank accounts to start her day.

Eviction from her apartment.

Leaving her child with a sitter while she exposed her body to paying strangers.

Dancing for drunken men and women, catering to their fantasies.

Driving in a storm, narrowly averting a disastrous wreck as a falling tree demolished her car.

And, now, sleeping in a warehouse that was damaged by storm.

Today was only an accelerated microcosm of her current life, comprising nothing of what she had ever intended. How did this happen? Why did this happen? Would it ever change?

The effects of the ale began to wear off, bringing Hannah to tears as she reflected upon the immediacy of her life, compounded by the immeasurable responsibility her child presented each day.