Harpo woke, and then he saw he was in a chair, and then remembered where he was. Lodgehouse. Treasure Island. Canada. He looked up to the window and saw the back of someone in reflection, so he quietly lifted the blanket over his head and made himself look like a cushion. From now on, he wouldn’t be heard or seen any more either, and he’d go through life this way, watching it in the reflection of dirty windows.
But then, “Blima,” said that familiar female voice.
Harpo peeked out through a corner of the blanket. It was Ayala in the entrance of the room, her pretty reflection in the glass just like he’d hoped for, but something about her voice made him huddle deeper into the chair.
“Yes, I said,” came the chirpy reply.
“Blima, you look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Harpo lowered the blanket a bit more. Now he could see Blima’s sweet little face, those teardrop-shaped eyes. They met his in the window, and Harpo felt an immediate chill. But the little girl didn’t say anything. She didn’t give him away. She just looked back to her mother.
Now Harpo had no choice but to hide in earnest. Ayala couldn’t know he was here. She’d be furious, think he’d been eavesdropping. Besides, she had his mother’s fiery look, that Minnie expression. And maybe it had been her Minnie tone of voice that had made him hide under a blanket in the first place.
“You can’t talk back to me that way,” Ayala was saying to Blima.
“I’m sorry, I said.”
“And when I say you have to take your sister to talk to the guests, I mean it.”
“Except Sonja was feeling shy, so I can do it by myself, I don’t mind.”
“When I tell you to do something, you do it. Sonja is cuter. Guests like her more. And a child’s duty is to say goodnight to everyone. You have to do it by name. And you have to curtsy. Both of you, and it’s your responsibility to make sure that it gets done properly. This is the only place that Jews are allowed to be, so we have to make it proper.”
“Okay!”
“You know what you’re doing?” said Ayala. “You’re making my heart shrink. You make my heart shrink every time you misbehave.”
There was a silence, and suddenly Harpo was worried that his stomach would growl and give him away. If it wasn’t his stomach, it would be his heart. It would break right apart. It would sound like a zipper. Harpo peeked. Blima was opening and closing her little jacket.
“Do you want me to be able to love anyone at all?” asked Ayala.
Blima looked up, not at her mother but at Harpo.
“Yes,” said Blima. “I want you to love me and Sonja and Daddy.”
“Then you can’t make my heart shrink anymore,” said Ayala. “If you do, then there won’t be room for any love at all. I’ll live in the attic forever, and lock the door behind me.”
Harpo’s fingers tingled. He thought—he didn’t know what to think. He knew he wanted to hug that little girl. She wasn’t a heart shrinker. She was a love conductor. He’d thought the word conductor. He’d have to tell Groucho. He would. He’d tell him. He loved his family.
Harpo shrank deeper into the chair, grimacing at the groan of leather, but the Ayala in reflection seemed not to notice. She turned and left the room, tugging at Blima’s arm like she was an old toy she wouldn’t mind if she broke.
Harpo sat back, let all his muscles relax. He’d tensed everything up, even his jaw, so had to work now, massage his face with his fingers, to get the muscles to release. Poor little Blima. If she was his daughter, he’d never let her feel sad like that. No daughter of his would ever be broken-hearted.
He stood. He needed to find that little girl. He needed to talk to her, to explain what mothers could be like, to comfort her. For once in his life, he’d be something other than a playmate to a little kid.
“Your name is Blima,” said Harpo, creeping into the garage where Blima was threading binder twine around a tin can. The little girl didn’t look up. “Is this a game? Like when you ran around the corridors?”
“No,” said Blima. “That one was called Wall Mouse. This is something different.”
“I see.” Harpo crept forward slowly. He could feel his connection to the little girl, and it was tenuous like worn-out twine. And this moment was fragile too, one wrong move and it would pop like a soap bubble. What kind of husband would he be, what kind of father would he make, if he couldn’t even help a little kid? He sat down on a stool near the door. “You look sad,” he said. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want her to be, that if she was his daughter, she’d never be sad again. Susan always said she wanted kids. Harpo saw it now. Maybe he wanted a family too.
Blima unwrapped the can and spun the chord around her wrist. “Jews are allowed here, you know.”
“I know.”
“They’re not allowed to go anywhere else. This is the only place that’s safe.”
“Boy,” said Harpo. “Don’t I know that one, kid.”
Then there was a silence. Finally, Blima unwrapped her can again. “I did something terrible,” she said.
“What did you do?” But Harpo knew already. She hadn’t asked her sister to greet the guests by name. “Whatever it was, it can’t be that bad. Your mother just gets into funny moods sometimes.” And didn’t he know all about that as well. “Your mom told me that you’re very smart.”
Blima looked away. “My mother wouldn’t say a thing like that.”
Harpo pulled his stool forward, to look closer at that cute little face he liked so much. But the base of the stool was caught in the twine, and it toppled a bit. Harpo grabbed it, and walked it backward a little, to where it would stand up again. “Your mother trusts you to look after the guests,” he said. “Especially when their brothers leave them outside on docks.”
“I did that by myself because I wanted to.”
“Your mother didn’t tell you to go outside and listen for me?” Harpo picked up a piece of twine that was coiled up by his feet. There was string everywhere. He wrapped it around his fingers, and a can on Blima’s workbench twitched.
“I saw you go outside, and then I saw the two men laughing. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You’re a good girl.” Harpo tugged on the twine around his fingers and saw that it came from a length of it. “You have a good spirit.” He tugged it higher, and saw that it came right from Blima’s spool. He must have the other end. He let the twine out, so that he would have a lot of slack. Then he stood slowly, slowly led the twine closer to Blima, winding it around stools and tables as he went. She was fiddling with a hammer now, and didn’t look up, and so Harpo crept closer still.
“Whatever you did, it probably wasn’t that bad.”
“I hid something,” Blima whispered, “something that didn’t belong to me.”
And abruptly Harpo remembered the letter. What if it hadn’t been a dream after all? What if Ayala really had written something for him to deliver? “Did it belong to your mom?” he asked. “This thing you hid?”
Blima hammered her can. “Maybe.”
“Did she give it to you, to put in the post, this something?” Blima hammered harder.
Harpo wound the twine around two more stools, some hammers and an instrument he didn’t even recognize. “I like to hide things from my brothers,” he said.
Blima looked up. “What do you hide?”
“Crosswords. Cards. Coffee mugs, books. Once, I hid my brother Chico’s pants.”
“How did you hide pants?”
“We were sharing a room in a hotel.” Harpo pulled tight on the twine, holding his breath, but Blima didn’t seem to notice that they were connected to everything in the place. “We were in a play. So we were travelling from one theatre to another. One morning, my brother slept late, so I got up quietly, and I took away all his clothes.”
Blima hid her face. Harpo crept around and around so that all the tools were caught now.
“Then Chico had to come down to the registration desk wearing his pajamas.”
“Oh,” Blima cooed. “We have a registration desk. I like mischief stories.”
“I’ve done loads of mischief,” said Harpo. “You know that I used to jump out the window in school? I’d jump right out of Miss Flatto’s second grade class, and walk back in through the front door.” Really, he’d been thrown. Two bigger boys hauled him up by the armpits, pitched him right out.
“I like your stories,” said Blima. “I like you, Mister Harpo.”
“So that makes us friends.” And then Harpo spun around and around so he would be caught by the twine too, they would have everything strung up between them.
“I want to be your friend,” Blima said.
Harpo felt that light-bulb feeling again, lit right up, looking at poor little Blima’s stricken brown eyes. So he shrugged, big, raising his rope-caught arms. The twine pulled taut, and the stools lifted right off the ground.
Blima, who had jumped off her chair as all the tools in the room were rising, bubbled over with laughter. She jumped up and down, and Harpo jumped too, and everything in the shed clattered and banged. It took them half an hour to get Harpo unstuck again, another hour to tidy, Blima chattering away like a little bird, Harpo not feeling like a playmate this time. He felt different. He felt like he could be different now. He wanted a family. His family would have to include kids.