I frowned, tightening my embrace around the book. “Accident?”
My first-grade teacher bent forward and patted my knee, the cluster of cheap bangles jangling on her wrist. I liked their bright colors. “You’ve been staying with a friend of your mother’s, is that right, Clover?”
I nodded cautiously as my ears started to burn. A prickle of sweat began to ease its way between the chair leather and the backs of my thighs. The rowdy shrieks of my classmates floated through the open window, adding to my discomfort.
My teacher’s uncomfortable smile was unnerving. “You’re going to stay with your grandfather instead tonight. He’s coming up from New York City to pick you up this afternoon. Won’t that be fun?”
I really had no idea if it would be fun or not. Since I’d only spent a handful of afternoons with my maternal grandfather in my short lifetime, I felt relatively neutral toward the man. He’d seemed nice enough, even though he didn’t really ever say much, and he and my mom kind of acted like strangers with each other. But he did always send me a gift on my birthday—this year it’d been the animal book I now held on my lap. Maybe he’d bring me something new.
“Why can’t I stay with Miss McLennan?”
The old spinster who lived a block from my parents wasn’t a pleasant host, and her house always smelled like roast beef, no matter what was being served. But aside from making sure I was fed and taken to school, Miss McLennan left me to my own devices, usually reading alone in my room while she sat crocheting on her plastic-covered sofa. And since my parents often dropped me off to stay with her for weeks on end, she and I had learned to peacefully coexist—even though I’m pretty sure she did it for the wad of cash my dad always tucked into her palm before he left.
My teachers exchanged bleak glances and communicated in some kind of secret code using only their eyebrows, culminating in a heavy sigh from Ms. Lucas.
“Clover, I’m sorry to say this, but your parents are dead.” The other women sucked in sharp breaths, stunned by my principal’s callous delivery of such delicate news.
Equally shocked, I sat, eyes wide. The women hovered nervously around me like they were trying to anticipate the movement of a wild animal.
Finally, I managed a whisper. “Dead…? Like Mr. Hyland?”
I thought about the episode of Sesame Street the school showed my class after our teacher’s dramatic demise, where Big Bird grappled with the passing of his friend Mr. Hooper.
“I’m afraid so, Clover,” Ms. Lucas tutted, trying to make up for her abrupt revelation. “I’m very sorry.”
* * *
Sitting next to my grandfather as the Metro-North chugged from Connecticut toward Manhattan in the remnants of the afternoon, I realized I hadn’t said goodbye to any of my classmates. But since they barely ever spoke to me, it likely didn’t matter. Before our kindergarten teacher’s sudden death, the other kids hadn’t given me much thought, but my curious reaction—mostly the fact that I wasn’t freaked out by it—had alienated me. After one boy began to spread rumors that I “hung out” with the dead, I was officially cast as a weirdo. They probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone.
Grandpa had arrived at my school just as the bell echoed through the halls at the end of lunchtime, holding the small sky-blue suitcase I’d taken to Miss McLennan’s. After a brief conversation with my teachers, spoken in mumbled tones I struggled to decipher, Grandpa guided me solemnly to a cab waiting outside the school gate.
En route to the train station, he’d given me only a few details about my parents’ accident—it had involved an old boat, a tropical thunderstorm, and something called the Yangtze River. I’d just nodded in response, secretly wondering if my parents had spotted any pandas swimming in that river. But as I watched suburbia slide by on loop outside the dusty train window, reality began to percolate.
To die, I knew, meant you were never, ever coming back. From that moment on, you only existed in people’s memories. I remembered my mom impatiently herding me out the front door on the morning they left for China. And the distracted kiss she blew in my direction when she left me with Miss McLennan and told me to “be good” as she fussed with her reflection in the car window. My father might have waved to me from the front seat, but I couldn’t be certain. That morning, as usual, they seemed to have other things on their mind.
I also knew that it was important to cry when somebody died. After Mr. Hyland’s heart attack, I’d seen the librarian sobbing in the hallway. And when Grandpa and I sat down on the train, I noticed him slide his thumb beneath his eyes several times and wipe it on his sleeve. So I waited expectantly for the first tear to spill from my own lashes and I even pressed on my eyelids a few times just to check. But no tears had fallen yet.
Two hours later, we stepped out of Grand Central Station into the dark clutches of evening, the wind gnawing my cheeks and the chaos of traffic seizing my eardrums. This was my first time in the big city—I wasn’t sure if I liked it.
Trying to anchor myself amid the unfamiliarity, I gripped the bottom of Grandpa’s coat as he thrust his arm high in the air and whistled. It must have been some kind of magic trick, because a yellow cab materialized in front of us. Although I hardly knew my grandfather, somehow I was certain that I was safe. Besides my blue suitcase, he was the only familiar thing I could hold on to.
The scene speeding past the taxi window was worlds away from the repetitive suburbs of the train ride: soaring buildings, pulsing lights, throngs of people weaving among one another on the sidewalk. I wondered how Grandpa could possibly be ignoring it all. But he just stared blankly at the back of the seat in front of him and mumbled something about needing to pick up milk.
When we arrived in front of a narrow brownstone, Grandpa handed a neatly folded bundle of bills to the driver.
“Say ‘thank you,’ Clover,” he instructed me as he pushed open the cab door.
“Thank you, Mr. Driver.”
The garlic-scented grouch in the front seat grunted in response.
Inside the brownstone, I counted each step out loud as we climbed toward the third floor. Just as I announced number fourteen, a man in a brimmed hat came swaggering down the stairs.
“Hello, Patrick,” he said to my grandfather before noticing me peeking out from behind his thigh.
Grandpa put down my suitcase to shake the man’s hand.
“Leo,” he said. “Meet my granddaughter, Clover.”
Leo gave Grandpa a brief, sympathetic glance, then bent down and offered his hand to me, his broad smile punctuated by a single gold tooth.
“Pleased to meet you, kid,” he said, the overhead light reflecting in his eyes like sunbeams on an unopened Coca-Cola bottle. “Welcome to the building.”
I shook his hand as firmly as I could, admiring the amber warmth of his skin. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Leo stepped aside, sweeping his arm up the stairs like a theater usher. “I’ll let you be on your way,” he said, tipping his hat. “But I look forward to seeing you both soon.”
On the third floor, I watched Grandpa sift through keys on a ring attached to his belt, then click open the procession of locks. As he hung our coats on the rack by the door, I looked around his living room with wonder. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, overflowing with all sorts of objects—precious rocks, animal skulls, creatures in jars. It was like Grandpa lived in the museum I’d visited last month on a school field trip.
And now I lived there too.
After a dinner of baked beans and toast, and only a few words spoken between us, Grandpa led me to a small room at the end of the apartment. An enormous wooden desk sat in one corner, with stacks of papers and books lined up like chimneys on top of it. In the other corner was a single bed and a nightstand with a green banker’s lamp and a small vase holding a lone peony.