Everything on a Waffle: List 3

I tried taking huge steps up to where Uncle Jack stood with Miss Bailey but I tripped and went sprawling, skinning my knee badly.

A car pulled up with the family who wanted to see the house, and there we three stood looking with dismay at my skinned knee while the family fell out in a big pile of kids and dogs.

“I don’t want dogs in the house,” said Miss Bailey sotto voce to Uncle Jack.

“I don’t think she’ll need a Band-Aid.”
“No Band-Aid,” I said, following his cue.

“I just got the carpets cleaned,” said Miss Bailey, eyeing my leg warily, which sounded cruel and self-serving but I figured it just slipped out.

“I’ll wait out here,” I said and hobbled to lean against Uncle Jack’s car.

Uncle Jack went long-striding up to the prospective buyers and shook their hands, greeted the children, and patted the pets.

The parents frowned and said, oh, what about the children, and Uncle Jack said jovially, are they apt to lick the carpet? Everyone laughed and the mother said, no, in case there was any doubt on that score.

There was a lot of bright light and an awful lot of noise. Compared to the comatose silence I had been in, it was an unbelievable racket.

A man leaned over me and said, “Primrose?” I blinked just like the heroines in movies.

The nurse returned to say that she had sent an underling to fetch Uncle Jack. Without another word but a noble, terribly-important-things-to-do look, Dr. Sachs walked out.

“I don’t know, Primrose, it just did. You also had a bad concussion and were unconscious for a while. We had you airlifted to the Comox Hospital and you’ll have to stay here until you’re well enough to convalesce in Coal Harbour.”

Even though the truck driver who hit me had been told by witnesses that it wasn’t his fault, that I had stood in the road like a stricken deer while he rounded the corner, that it was a miracle he had been able to swerve enough to avoid splatting me like a bug on his windshield, even so, he had six children of his own and he felt just awful.

I wondered if he was having his little joke with me and decided he was not and that perhaps I was simply destined to see baby toes everywhere for a while.

The nurses tried to take them away from me, not because they found baby-toe-shaped chocolates macabre, but because they thought no child should eat that much candy.

“No, you see he does showings during the dinner hour,” I said.
“Oh,” said Miss Honeycut, looking peeved. “But that should be no problem at all...."

“Yes,” she said, getting all crisp again. “There was the time I was in our family’s ancestral home, in Yorkshire. There was Uncle Ned and Aunt Winifred and my great-aunt Bertha, and tiny Penelope and my sister’s second husband’s niece, Claire, and her boyfriend, Noodles...”

Miss Honeycut’s voice droned on and on.

I watched a fly making a trip across the windowsill and became so engrossed that I missed most of the anecdote but I gathered it had something to do with a seance and startling ghostly revelations.

I watched a fly making a trip across the windowsill and became so engrossed that I missed most of the anecdote but I gathered it had something to do with a séance and startling ghostly revelations.

Then she laughed uproariously. “Ah, yes, Noodles, don’t you see, always up for a joke.”

“Yes, well, I do believe I will have your uncle over after all. Such care, taking a child into your house. You must be very grateful, realizing, as I’m sure you do, what an encumbrance you will be should he decide he wishes to have his own family someday. Well, we must move forward!”

"...She made the mistake of saying ‘What was that again?’ when Miss Honeycut asked her how she was and Miss Honeycut thought she hadn’t heard the séance story and is telling it all over, only much louder.” He smiled mischievously.

As if on cue, Miss Perfidy appeared in the doorway looking annoyed and bedraggled.

“Well,” I said, modestly ducking my chin, “it was just an accident.”
“That’s not what I hear. People have been saying that you tried to do yourself in...."

“You were always a strange child,” said Miss Perfidy, eyeing me speculatively.

We sat there silently for a minute while Miss Perfidy fastidiously picked crumbs off her skirt with a wet finger and ate them.

She had very rheumy old eyes with the blue irises bleached, like a fish that’s been lying dead on the beach for a while.

No,” she said simply.
“No?” I asked incredulously. “Never?”

I sat there, mouth agape. “But I didn’t take back my sweaters!”