Page 9 of Mornings By the Linden Tree
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Contrary to popular belief and my outstanding record of cases won for my clients, I did not, in fact, know everything. Certainly, I liked to think I knew a great deal as all of us tend to do at times. When I got a bit too big for my britches as my father used to say, the cosmos would then hop-skip in to deliver a bitch slap to my pompous cheek. Those dressing-downs were few and far between, but when they came, they arrived like that famed Mike Tyson uppercut against Michael Spinks.
As I walked in circles in my living room a week after bringing Valeria into my home, an exhausted little girl in my arms, I was at the very edge of losing my sanity. We’d not slept through the night for three days now. Both of us were hopelessly feeble—mentally, physically, and spiritually. I wasn’t ordinarily a religious sort, but I’d offered up a plea to any divinity who was listening a few hours ago to send some sort of sign. Anything that would help soothe this poor child who’d been tossed into a new life to face old demons she couldn’t even verbalize about properly.
We made another pass of the living room, her head on my shoulder, a thumb in her mouth—a sure sign she was stressed according to some site online—as I hummed an old Simon and Garfunkel tune about a bridge over troubled water. Sometime over the past three nights and days of unholy confusion and tears, I had found my ward loved music. Around midnight this morning, we stumbled onto Simon and Garfunkel, and theirentire musical collection was now playing on a loop in an effort to ease the child into sleep.
“Do you want to try to go back to bed?” I wearily asked as the sun shone down on the Common. I had no clue what time it was. After three nights of little sleep, I wasn’t even sure what year it was. People were milling around outside, the park filling with runners, speed walkers, and folks taking their dogs for their morning constitutionals.
“No, bad bed,” she replied.
I bounced her up on my hip a bit higher. Bad bed. So it seemed. The first few nights, she had been restless but drifted off. The fourth night here, she had awoken screaming in the night and so that pattern had started. What she was dreaming of, she couldn’t or wouldn’t say. I assumed she simply couldn’t articulate what was upsetting her, so she claimed her bed was bad. No amount of checks under it for monsters would calm her, so we had taken to making laps of the living room, her in my arms, until morning came. Then, usually, she would succumb to exhaustion, and I would take her to her bed, where she would sleep until noon as I ingested coffee, napped fitfully, and tried to find any information I could about night terrors in children.
We paused at the bow window to watch the people, and because my lower back was so tight, I could barely draw a breath. We both needed a bath. I could smell how sweaty she was. I could imagine how terrible I looked. I hadn’t shaved for days. Days. When had I showered last? Dear God. That was unthinkable. I’d never skipped shaving in all the years I’d had whiskers. My goatee must be miserably unkempt. I will never, ever, under penalty of law and imprisonment, say parenting was easy. Never ever again. Never. Not ever.
“Who that over there?” Valeria asked around her thumb. I blinked away the mental fog lingering in my head.
“There are several hundred people out there, Bunny, you need to be more specific,” I replied, then yawned. My lumbar twitched painfully, so I moved her to my other hip. She settled in comfortably before popping her soaking wet thumb from her mouth to point a little finger at the park.
“The man with the purple hat,” she replied and jammed her thumb between her lips. I’d worried about this thumb sucking and her teeth but had not found a solution during my nights rocking and humming “The 59th Street Bridge Song” to delve into dental difficulties later in life from sucking one’s thumb as a child.
I scanned the street and found the man in question. He was situated under a massive American linden tree along the edge of the park, surrounded by a large group of adults and children seated on rainbow blankets. He seemed to be singing and playing a guitar…or was it a mandolin? A banjo? A lyre? My brain was too mushy to process what kind of stringed instrument it was.
“I think he’s a performer,” I blearily replied. My eyes were so tired they burned.
“He’s got a nice hat,” she said after another wet pop.
“Mm, just like Willy Wonka,” I sleepily remarked. Her dark head lifted off my shoulder as her arm rested on the back of my sticky neck. I needed a shower and shave badly.
“He looks fun. Can we go see him?”
I was this close to collapsing from anxiety about her bad dreams, the thumb sucking, and utter fatigue, but when she looked at me with Aida’s expressive eyes all I could do was nod. She smiled. A weary smile, but a smile all the same. I’d not seen too many of those over the past few days. So, dragging my ass out the door with a child who had far too much energy for someone who had barely slept, we made our way to the Common. Valeria loved the park. We had come here daily just toget her some exercise in the hope that being worn out would ease the bad dreams. She particularly liked the tadpole playground with the swan boats in the botanical gardens, which was her top favorite thing to do. The frog pond wading pool wasn’t open yet, but I knew she would love playing in the spray pool on a steamy summer day.
Pity sleeping wasn’t high on her list of enjoyable activities.
When we entered the park, we turned left and there he was, strumming away on a six-string, wearing a velveteen plum-colored top hat. His clothes were a mishmash of colors, all bright and merry, from vibrant yellow trousers to green suspenders worn over a red shirt with large pink flower buttons. He looked like a colorblind clown if you asked me. Even his shoes were garish. Where did someone even find violet high-top canvas sneakers?
Valeria yanked on my hand, and I stumbled along behind her until we were part of the large circle of adults, kids, and babies in strollers. Mr. Top Hat was singing about a happy duck as we stood among the families settled on blankets over the dewy grass. The moment we stopped, I wished I had brought a blanket to sit on because my legs were ready to fold under me. Valeria was bouncing and clapping. How? How was she able to bounce? I could barely recall where I lived at the moment.
Mr. Top Hat turned his attention to our side of the crowd. Oh. Oh well, Mr. Top Hat was incredibly attractive. Lean, blond, blue-eyed, with some sexy scruff clinging to his strong jaw. Aside from his clothes, he was just my type. His attire made my corneas cringe but put the man in something form-fitting and replace that silly hat with a stylish Fedora as many of the hipster dudes wore and he’d be a lovely dinner date slash bed partner. A small tingle in my groin startled me as Mr. Top Hat made his way to us, smiling so brightly it stunned me momentarily. Yes, this young man was a looker. Mid to late twenties, I would guess.Much the same age as Percy and my other occasional gentlemen friends.
He sang quite well and played his old guitar nicely. His sight darted down to Valeria before he knelt on one knee to sing to her. The child nearly floated off the soft green grass, then started singing along. Oh, so she knew the happy duck song. I’d never heard it before in my life. If the Boston Symphony or the Pops didn’t play it, I wouldn’t know it.
The song concluded with everyone shouting “Quack! Quack!” aside from me. Normally, I would be nonplussed about not knowing the lyrics to a nonsensical children’s song, but this morning, I felt left out. Many of the adults looked at me as if I were some sort of primordial ooze for not knowing when to quack. The singer grinned up at me as Valeria clapped loudly. That tightening in my trousers grew.
“Welcome to our Saturday morning sing-along,” Mr. Top Hat said and waved a hand at the lawn. “Please feel free to join us. We have lots of space. My name is Lennon Cole, and I’m part of the Happy Day Party Company of Boston.”
Oh it was Saturday. Good to know. Not all that long ago, this day had been sacrosanct and dedicated to all things Wesley. In less than a month, my holy day was now a day spent among strangers sitting on wet grass going quack. How did this happen?
“I love Lennons so much!” Valeria squealed before breaking free from my grip and planting herself on a blue blanket next to another girl with pigtails.
Lennon, seeing that he had enchanted my niece, stood, gave me a wink, and then launched into another song. I shook off the odd fizzle in my stomach, probably brought on by too much dark roast throughout the night, and went to pick Valeria up off the blanket.
“She’s fine. Penny loves to make new friends,” the ivory-skinned woman seated with the little one with pigtails said. “If you would like to sit, I can move over.”
“No, no, that’s fine.” I placed a hand on Valeria’s shoulder. The late April sun was not quite warm enough under the shade of the new leaves waving overhead. We should have worn sweaters, but I’d not thought of it. I was failing this guardianship assignment terribly. When my hand touched her, Valeria looked back and up at me. “It’s not polite to just sit down on someone’s blanket without being asked to do so by the owner of the blanket.”
She whipped her head around to look at Penny, she of the long golden pigtails. “Can I sits with you?”
