Their carriage rose up and they reached the top of another dip. A gust of air came at them, causing Martha to screw her eyes shut. When she opened them, Zelda had her arms raised, her hands snatching in the air. “My scarf,” she cried out.
Martha turned her head to watch as the scarf hung in the air for a moment before it blew away on another blast of air. It looked like an exotic bird flying over the heads of the people below. “We can look for it when we get off,” she said.
As she turned to reassure her nana, their carriage thumped into a set of double wooden doors with a Keep Out sign. Entering the darkness, Martha blinked hard, questioning what she had just seen.
Zelda no longer had her blond princess curls.
In their place were a few wispy gray strands, and nothing else.
Their carriage shunted past a giant spider with moving mandibles and flashing green eyes, and something tickly trailed across their faces, but all Martha could picture in her mind was her nana’s smooth head.
When the ride finished, she was glad to scramble out. She felt like she was still moving, her legs unsteady, as she offered Zelda her hand.
“Shall we go on again?” Zelda asked.
“Don’t you want to look for your scarf?”
Zelda ran her hand over her head. She gave it a rub at the back. “Someone has probably found and kept it. Let’s not waste any time. We don’t have much of it left.”
Martha looked at her watch. “We have twenty minutes before Gina arrives.”
Zelda fixed her eyes somewhere in the distance and she touched her head again. She stared for a while, unblinking, before she cleared her throat. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.
16
Read Me
They moved away from the ghost train and found a quiet spot behind the café. “Don’t tell Gina about the candy floss,” Zelda said.
“I won’t do that.” Martha swallowed, lost for words as the music faded away. There were no longer any lights and bustle to distract them.
“You may have noticed I have a shop dummy–look going on,” Zelda said.
Martha nodded. Her tongue was dry and she tried to focus on her nana’s eyes instead of her head.
“It’s okay.” Zelda sighed. “It’s quite obvious. You’re not being rude by looking. I can’t stand wearing wigs, they’re so scratchy. I thought you might have guessed about...” She ran her hand down the back of her skull.
“No. I just thought you liked scarves.” Martha let her gaze follow Zelda’s fingers. She saw a scarlet scar that ran up the back of her neck to the top of her head. Hearing a gasp, she realized it came from her own lips. “Is that why you were in the hospital?”
“That was for a minor op. The scar’s from an operation I had for a brain tumor,” Zelda said plainly. “They got rid of most of it, but my hair didn’t grow back properly. Two disasters for the price of one, eh? It looked a lot worse with the staples. Like I had a bloody small ladder running up my head.”
Martha couldn’t absorb her words. She wanted to sink down and sit on the ground with her head in her hands, but she told herself to be calm, for Zelda’s sake. “They got rid of most of it?” she repeated.
“There was a bit they couldn’t quite get to, like when there’s some yogurt left in the pot and you can’t reach it with your spoon.”
Martha squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to shout out that this was so bloody unfair. She’d rediscovered this amazing woman, and she had been going through this. And without her family around her, too. “It’s not really the same, is it?” she blurted. “I mean, are you okay?”
“I can’t complain. At my age, something is going to get me, sooner or later.”
Martha held her hand to her mouth. “How can you be so bloody blasé about this?”
Zelda didn’t speak for a while. She seemed to diminish in size and suddenly looked really old. She fixed her gaze on the wooden clown menu and her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. “Because the alternative is howling my heart out,” she said fiercely. “Getting angry would be a waste of my precious time. I’m here and you’re here. We’ve just been on the ghost train together, and who’d have thought that would ever happen?” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for her next words. “I never thought I’d see you again, before I...”
Words jammed in Martha’s throat. It hurt when she swallowed. “Before you, what?”
Zelda let out her breath in a whistle. “They tell me different things, those bloody doctors. I never know who’s right and who’s wrong, and they all just look like kids. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s unlikely I’ll see Christmas.”
Martha’s stomach plunged, as if she’d stepped into an elevator shaft. “You have less than ten months?”
“More like four.”
Martha swayed and struggled to remain upright. Her future flashed through her head. She’d already pictured that Zelda would be a big part of it. She choked back tears and focused on the roof of the Waltzer. Someone had thrown a red high-heeled shoe up there, and a broken umbrella. A chill crept over her and she tried not to breathe in case she let out a cry. The top of her nose stung as she fought back her tears.
The two women stayed silent for a while.
Zelda slowly released her grip on the chair. “What will be, will be,” she said, her eyes shining with tears.
“But we have so much to talk about. I need to know what—”
Zelda held up her hand. “I only want to look forward and not back.”
Martha pushed her striped hair back off her forehead. “How can we do that? My parents lied to me about your death. You’ve been missing from my life for years. We need to discuss it all.”
Zelda shook her head fiercely. “Do we have to, Martha? Can’t we pretend that it didn’t happen? Can’t we just have some fun together?”
“Blue Skies and Stormy Seas brought me to you. Why did you write it? You put a message inside a copy, so you must have meant to give it to me...” Martha reached out and gently took hold of her nana’s shoulder.
“Gina warned me you’d have a lot of questions.” Zelda rubbed her nose.
“I think that’s an understatement.”
Without warning, Zelda jerked back. She grabbed hold of her wheels and maneuvered her chair. She rolled past the café and into the main body of the fairground again. “We should go to the entrance, to wait for Gina,” she said over her shoulder.
“We haven’t finished talking,” Martha called helplessly after her.
“We have, for today. And there’s something I want to do.”
Martha helped to push Zelda towards the entrance gate. She still had so many questions turning over in her mind as they neared the fiberglass ice cream cone. Keeping hold of her emotions was like trapping a whirlwind in her chest. She didn’t know when she’d see Zelda again, to ask her these things.
“Pass me my bag, please,” Zelda said when they reached the entrance.
In a haze, Martha reached down and pulled it out from under her chair. She thought that Zelda might want a drink of water, or to take a tablet. However, her nana took out a copy of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas. It had a burgundy cover and gold lettering, a pristine copy like the one at Monkey Puzzle Books. Surprised to see it, Martha let out a puff of breath.
Zelda opened the book. She waited until a group of people approached. Then, hesitating like a conductor before they waved a baton at the orchestra, she cleared her throat. “Ahem. ‘The Puppet Maker,’” she read aloud. Her voice was as loud and clear as Rita said it was.
Martha’s limbs grew rigid as a young couple paused to listen. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
Zelda batted her hand and raised her voice a notch. “‘A puppet maker and his wife had been married for many years but couldn’t have the children they longed for...’”