I Am Isabel the Storyteller

January 19, 2021

# 16. I, Isabel Scheherazade Solve the Mystery of the Missing Paper and Another Mystery Pops Up in It’s Place.

Is it possible that the papergirl hasn’t come yet? Not likely. I’ve just arrived at the breakfast nook for breakfast. Something’s up. The paper isn’t spread out in the usual messy, comfortable manner. It’s weird to see Pop and Mimi without a “table cloth” of newsprint under their elbows. No comics for the twins. No editorial or quirky story under discussion.

It’s unusually silent too. The twins look from me to Pop to Mimi and up to the bookshelf at the window end of the nook.

As I pour Cheerios I spy the paper out of the corner of my eye, HIDDEN, sticking out a bit from between a cookbook called How to Cook Everything New and Revised and Pop’s notebook, also new and revised, of the recipes he’s creating for the five of us.

I can just make out the top part of the headline and the date. (Okay. Okay. I know my blog-readers are probably saying, Right, Isabel, how can you read the print on a paper that’s been hidden? Easy. I bet you can read a sentence even if all the vowels are removed? Or the letters are scrambled in the word? Well, me too. Only difference is I’m reading the TOP half of each word. Put a card halfway through the headline below. See? You CAN read it!) I make some guesses and see that the headline says:

Preliminary Hearing Scheduled for Traffic Fatality.

I pretend I don’t see the paper, sprinkle blueberries on the toasty o’s, slice in a banana, add the milk, sit down, and dig in. I’m halfway through when Mimi and Pop say they’re taking the twins off to get their teeth brushed. (We have to go to Dr. Moon for shots and school checks.) Teeth-brushing will take a while, so I reach up to the bookshelves and yank out the paper. I spread it out after pushing my bowl to the side. No more appetite for Cherrios. The Killer’s picture is above the fold in the center of the page. He still has that dusty, jean jacket look about him.

The article says the Killer’s “Preliminary Hearing” will be in two weeks. At the courthouse on Main Street. Right down the street from the school. Right after school starts.

Could this be my chance to seek revenge? I must go to this hearing and, er, well, I don’t know what I’ll do. What’s a hearing I wonder?

And why did Pop and Mimi hide this important information?

Isabel Scheherazade

(My sketches are by my friend, Ryan.)

1 Comment

January 17, 2021

#14. I, Isabel Scheherazade find a bookmark on a special page of one of my favorite books and I THINK I’m getting a message from Dad. Can this be possible?

I’m still in bed gathering steam when my eyes land on one of my old storybooks–Beauty and the Beast. I love all the versions of that story, this one especially. When Dad read it to me, he said, This is one plucky girl. Like you, Isabel.

I think about this and mutter, USED to be, Dad; I USED to be a plucky girl.

I’m not feeling plucky these days.

I spy a feather bookmark. Dad put feather markers on important pages in his books and mine.

I get out of bed, pull Beauty and the Beast off the shelf, and open it to the page with the feather. I stroke it smooth. It’s brick red on its topside and pink below.

I remember when Dad stopped at this page and places the feather in the crease, a very serious look on his face.

Isabel, listen up; this is important. He taps the words. Keep track of it, okay? He was always advising me to keep track of this or that.

This is the sentence: “Nothing cures homesickness quicker than an Unexplored Tower.”

See what it’s saying? Dad asks me. Then he reads it again.

I trace the sentence with my fingertip like Dad did. I can even hear his voice. “Nothing cures homesickness quicker than an Unexplored Tower.”

To tell you the truth, back when Dad was rereading the quote I didn’t get what was So Big about this sentence. I was more interested in finishing the story before I fell asleep.

But, now, here in Mimi and Pop’s house, my eyes prickle and a warm feeling fills my head while I stare at the words, it’s like Dad is reaching out to me in a comforting way from the Way-Back Seat of my memory.

I lean into the magic of it all and whisper, Why’s this so important, Dad?

ISABEL

January 16, 2021

#13. I have another thought about the daily treat at Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe

I’m piling up a small stack of things I never did with Mom and Dad.

The stack sits in sun and shade. When we do something new with Mimi or Pop, it reminds me that I never did this with Mom and Dad, and that reminds me that they’re gone. Sort of like a chain reaction.

I explain this to Mimi, while I stir my pumpkin latte. I watch her face.

She sips her hazelnut coffee. Isabel, she takes a breath, after a while? Well, after a while, I hope that when we do new things it won’t always come with the sad thought…She hesitates.

I finish her sentence, With the sad thought that Mom and Dad are dead, you mean?

Mimi nods.

I think, THAT will never happen. But I don’t say this to Mimi. Instead, I gulp the top froth; it gives me a milk mustache that gets the twins laughing. I’m about to say, Mimi, we’re not there yet, but then I just can’t help it; I start laughing too when the twins give themselves chocolate mustaches. Then Belle, who was drinking a Blueberry Smoothie, comes over with a blue mustache.

Like I said: sun and shade.

ISABEL

5 Comments

January 15, 2021

#12. A funny story that acts like that splash of cold water that primes the pump (metaphor alert)…

Every morning Pop says to the twins, Did you put on new underwear, boyos? (He doesn’t call them dudes like Dad did. That’s good. It would be confusing.)

The twins salute and say, Yes siree, Pop. Yes siree, Pop. (We think that because they’re twins they repeat their answers.)

But you know how little boys can be smelly? Well, Clyde and Sam REALLY smell on this one morning, so Pop brings them into the bathroom, thinking maybe that they didn’t wipe. Or something like that.

Mimi? he calls out. Come here a minute, would you, Dearie? Mimi and I do question marks eyebrow wiggles at each other. I give her the I dunno shrug. (I am so not the expert on smelly 4-year olds. Geez.)

She goes down the hall to the bathroom. I hear lots of Pop-Mimi-Murmur-Murmuring and Little-Boy-TalkTalkTalking. Mimi goes upstairs and comes down with two pairs of Elmo underpants.

After a while they march back to the kitchen.

Pop says, Now remember, Sam and Clyde. “New underpants” means that you take OFF the old ones. You don’t just add a new pair.

And we start to giggle.

Giggle! Gushing Giggles. Like that water that whooshed out of the well after we primed it. And we get active: The twins show me their new Elmos and drag me off to play Tonka Trucks and Matchbox cars with them. Mimi stuffs smelly underpants in the trash. (Guess she’s not going to try to recycle ’em which is very unusual for her.) Pop calls to her to come sit outside with him for a while.

It takes giant, big minutes for all the chuckles and activity to subside.

Neato. Or sort of neato anyway.

ISABEL

-sketch by my friend Ryan

4 Comments

January 15, 2021

#11b. Old-fashioned Water Pumps: Metaphor alert!

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January 15, 2021

#11a. A story from the Way-Back Seat of my memory about Dad that shows how pumped he was about Miss Mary’s pump.

Miss Mary’s water pump looks like the one in Little House on the Prairie. In fact, it looks JUST like that water pump LAMP next to my bed–the one Dad made in shop class. I wish I could ask Dad if he got the idea for the lamp from Miss Mary’s real pump.

BEFORE everything changed, my family would “come over” to Pop and Mimi’s for brunch or picnics, stuff like that. And every time we come, Dad brings us to the farm to see the animals and, quiz us on how the pump works.

Dad really wanted us to understand, and I’m finally getting it. Here’s what happens the very last time we visit BEFORE. (Which, BTW, is only two weeks ago. Seems more like a decade.)

After cranking the pump handle a few times while the twins and I watch, Dad raises his eyebrow and says, Who can tell me why there’s no water coming out of the pump today?

ME: Air.

DAD: Right, air’s gotten in, so there’s no water pressure. No water pressure, no water.

(You might notice that the twins aren’t saying anything. That’s ’cause they’re four. They ARE looking back and forth between Dad and me like it’s a tennis match.)

DAD: So what do we do?

TWINS: Knock on Miss Mary’s door! Knock on Miss Mary’s door!

DAD: Looking a little perplexed, Er, why would we do that dudes?

TWINS: Miss Mary has water in her sink! Miss Mary has water in her sink!

DAD: He ruffles their heads and fist-bumps with them, and then he says, What ELSE could we do?

ME: Get rid of the air that’s wrecked the water pressure.

DAD: How do we do that?

ME: Like this. And I run back to Mimi and Pop’s, turn on their hose, pour water from the hose into a bucket, and run back up the hill to Miss Mary’s. (The twins watch me like I’ve never done this before and, trust me, if I’ve done it once, I’ve done it a zillion times. Or at least three times when they were around.)

DAD: Now what?

ME: I pour the water into the top here. (I have to stand tippy-toed to lift the bucket and pour it into this pipe that’s right next to the pump.) Then I pump the handle.

I pump the handle updownupdown a few times and then, with a great gurgle and splash, water spurts out and into the trough below. The trough’s for the animals to drink from. In fact, one of Miss Mary’s lambs (Pretty funny, huh? “Miss Mary’s Lambs,” like in the nursery rhyme?) scurries around the corner of the barn and starts lapping it up.

ISABEL

-sketch by my friend Ryan Grimaldi Pickard

January 14, 2021

#10. I remember a detail about the murderer.

Right before I confronted the killer, this is the scene at Ye Old Coffee Shoppe: Mimi thought we should try the round glass-top wire table Belle has tucked in a corner. Since it’s further from the counter and other customers she figured it might work better for the twins. (She and Pop haven’t started to put their foot down yet with their antics. I understand. I don’t how they’ll react to having somebody who isn’t Mom or Dad say “no” either.

Mimi says, Sam, er, maybe you shouldn’t teeter?

“Maybe?” Really, Mimi? I study Clyde as he moves his chair around on the flagstones to teeter it like Sam’s. I take a break from scooping pumpkin latte froth; it’s still too hot; I scan the rest of the room.

The door swings open and the oxygen sucks out of Ye Old Coffee Shoppe.

It’s him. The guy. The one who ran the red light. I know it’s him for sure because I saw his picture in the paper the day after he murdered Mom and Dad. Black curly hair, one big eyebrow, whiskers, a faded jean jacket, work pants, and boots.

I watch him order coffee. Belle asks him to repeat what he said. Figures he would be a mumbler.

I see that he’s dusty. Looks like drywall dust, I think. How the heck do I recognize drywall dust, I ask myself, and a scene from the Way-Back Seat of my memory emerges like magic.

This guy looks like DAD looked that time he fixed the wall in my bedroom–before he painted the rainbows and Mom did the constellations. I play the memory out in my head as I stare at the killer ripping sugar packets. Four of them. That’s a lot of sugar, Mister, I think. While he dumps sugar, the rest of him doesn’t move. My image of Dad and the drywall dust comes clearer, like a fog’s blown away from it.

At the end of the bedroom project, Dad is covered head to toe with white. He looks like someone with ghost make-up.

Mom and I laugh at him. (It’s just the three of us at this point in our lives; the twins haven’t been born yet.) Dad chases us around and makes hooohooo noises. He was so fun.

This guy must be on a coffee break. I’d read that he has two jobs–a floor-polisher and shelf-stocker in a grocery store at night and a builder during the day. Maybe this is why he looks exhausted. Today he must have been putting up dry wall.

I watch him carry the coffee to a table. He pulls out the chair and sits down. He cradles the cardboard cup. He doesn’t sip, just looks into a middle distance. Suddenly, he puts the cup down and puts his head in his hands.

I glance at Mimi to see if she’s noticing either the guy or me, but she’s totally into twin-teetering.

I push my chair back, stand up, and go over to his table. The rest, as they say, is history.

ISABEL

(sketches by Ryan Grimaldi Pickard)

4 Comments

January 13, 2021

#9. An AFTERWORD. Get it? Like afterward, but with the “a” changed to an “o”?

One time Dad and I stand next to this huge steam engine that pulls the commuter train between our town and the next one. I see the engineer and another guy shovel coal into a furnace. Dad says, The coal heats the water, and the steam from the water moves the train.

I hear all this huffing and puffing, like the engine is revving itself up for pulling all the cars.

Dad looks down at me and says, It’s called “gathering steam,” Isabel.

I think of Dad and the engine yesterday morning when Mimi comes up to see if I’m okay.

She sits on the edge of my bed and tells me that since Mom and Dad died it’s been hard for her to get up too. I feel bad ’cause I haven’t been thinking about how hard it must be for them.

It’s okay for you to feel the way you do, Mimi says. It’s because we’re sad. This is what it means to grieve.

I’m about to ask her whether we’ll ever STOP grieving, but don’t think I want to hear the answer. If we cease grieving does that mean we lose Mom and Dad?

Mimi gets up to go back downstairs, but turns back and says, Take your time, Isabel. You’re gathering steam.

If words can warm, then Mimi’s heat my heart.

ISABEL

1 Comment

January 13, 2021

#8. Why I Can’t Hop Out of Bed.

Every morning since coming to live with Pop and Mimi, after I wake up? After my eyes open? I. Just. Lie Here. It’s like I don’t have a habit of what to do next in this place. I haven’t jumped out of bed once.

Yet.

One reason is I’m shocked to be at Pop and Mimi’s still. Of course the twins and I have stayed overnight lots of times. It was always a special treat. We loved it. Now it’s like a Big Mistake. This place we loved to visit is now instead of the place we loved to live in. With the two people we loved most in the world. The universe.

So I’m shocked, like I-stuck-a-finger-in-an-outlet-shocked.

I think it’s partly because I’m not in my regular-when-life-was-good bedroom: Rainbows on the walls–painted by Dad. Constellations on the ceiling–painted by Mom. In our second floor, crowded apartment.

Where I am now is Dad’s old bedroom. The one he had when he was a kid like me.

Dormer window facing the morning sun. Bed with carved pineapple bedposts.

Tiny bedside table with one drawer. I found a basketball inflator needle in it, leftover from Dad’s b-ball days as a hotshot three-point champ.

Water pump lamp. Dad made it in woodworking class when he was in fourth grade. The handle of the pump has a chain on it. When you pump the handle the light goes on and off. There’s a pretend spout and a water trough for pretend water to flow into. Oh, and did I mention this? The lamp shade has horses on it, like hole-punched horse shapes, so when it’s dark and the light is on you see horses all over the walls.

Back to why I can’t budge out of bed in the mornings:

I feel like I have to check on my mind and muscle powers. You know, to see if I’ve got any.

It’s like I’m Mr. Frank, the grocery man at Frank’s Grocery and Food Mart. I help Mimi with our weekly shopping there. She holds onto the cart and her list, and I fetch stuff for her. (That’s a Mimi word–fetch.) I always bump into Mr. Frank in his white apron. He checks the shelves and makes notes. Just doing inventory, Isabel, he says to me and pats my head. Need to see what’s what.

That’s how it is with me. I’m doing inventory, checking to see what I have left on my shelves.

It’s not that I don’t want to go downstairs and see Mimi and Pop, Clyde and Sam. I can hear them from here. They’re up and at ‘em, as Mom used to say.

Listen to this, Dearie, Pop says as he reads the sports page.

Do you want oatmeal or Cherrios, Clyde? Mimi doesn’t know exactly what the guys like for breakfast, and she’s trying to Get It Right.

And I hear VaroomVaroom noises that tell me the Tonkas are on the table next to the cereal bowls. Pop and Mimi don’t know that Dad didn’t allow toys at the table, because of all the spills.

Or maybe they do know and don’t want to say NO yet.

ISABEL

(sketches by Ryan Grimaldi Pickard, Isabel’s dear friend)

2 Comments

January 12, 2021

#7. Belle the Barrister crafts special drinks that help me swallow what’s happened. (I keep trying for metaphor…)

Our apartment is already rented to another family. The twins and I now live full-time and forever with Mimi and Pop. It’s like all of a sudden my closet is full of different clothes and I have no idea what fits and where I’d wear them anyhow. As a stop-gap filler activity until we figure out how we’ll fill the rest of life, we go to Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe every day. I think of it as Ye Olde Construction Shoppe.

Sometimes I sit at the counter and watch our Barista. Her name tag says she’s Belle the Barista, but I call her Belle the Builder. I love her.

Belle starts with Mimi’s Hazelnut Coffee: She weighs and grinds the beans and then saturates them with water for a sloooooow drip through a special metal filter into a glass carafe. Once the drip’s set, Belle quickquickquick stirs whole milk, cinnamon, cinnamon coffee syrup, and sugar in a deep metal cup, positions the steam wand from the expresso machine into the mixture, where it whirs away while she starts the twins’ hot chocolate.

She melts chocolate chips in a small, heavy pan and whisks in hot, whole milk, and a shake of chili-cinnamon. She sets the full mugs in front of the twins and swirls whipped cream on top until they shout WHEN! Belle names the hot chocolate the Clyde and Sam.

Mine is Isabel’s Special Latte. On our first visit here, Mimi thought age 13 was too young for Lattes. Then I told her Mom and I shared one once a week when I walked over to her lab after practice. Belle listened to me explain its strong pumpkin taste. Hmmmm. Your Mom was substituting pumpkin punch for caffeine kick. I can do that. And like a magician, she steams milk, scoops pumpkin purée, mixes “pumpkin” spices, and finishes it off with a mountain of very thick, from-scratch, whipped cream. It was as if Mom was at her shoulder giving her tips. With every swallow, I’m back in the lab watching Mom put away her slides and notebooks while we sip and chat.

With fancy neon markers, Belle adds our drinks to the drink white board. In between “White Mellow Mocha” and “Plain Ol’ Coffee with a Kick” is “Clyde ‘N Sam” and “Isabel’s Special Pumpkin Latte.” It makes us feel part of the community when I hear, I’ll have a Clyde ‘ Sam, Bella.

Spooning the whipped cream first, I “construct” this idea: This coffee shop habit is sweet in more ways than one. Belle crafts new, just-for-us drinks. At the same time, we’re crafting new, just-for-us lives.

ISABEL

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