The Crazyladies of Pearl Street Read Online Free Page B

through the mist. I see a small town. No, no, it's more like a village. And I see... I see water! Is it a river? The ocean? No, it's... a lake! And it's named after a person... wait a minute, wait a minute, it's coming to me. Is it Lake Nathan? No, not Nathan. Lake Samuel? No, not Sam—Ah! I've got it! George! It's Lake George, by George!”
    I didn't mind his teasing. I could tell he loved to perform, and there were still a couple of kids outside the cornerstore, so I said, “We came to Albany to be with my father. He made a party for us.”
    “A party?”
    “A Saint Patrick's Day party. He's out getting us a green cake.”
    “A green cake? H'm, I did see a man come out of 238 this morning. Dapper-looking gentleman, he was. And, you know, I remarked at the time that there was something in the way he walked that suggested a man on the trail of a cake. But I've got to be honest with you. From across the street I couldn't tell it was a green cake he was after. It could have been any color for all I knew.”
    “Yes, we're waiting for him to come back for the party.”
    A woman's voice from the back room called out in an exasperated whine, wanting to know if Mr Kane was going to close up or did he intend to stay open all night! His soup was getting cold!
    “Ah. My life-burden calls.” He chanted back, “Coming, dear.”
    “Well, I better be getting home.” I put my quarter up on the top of the glass candy case that served as a counter.
    “Why don't I just put it on the slate until your welfare check comes in?”
    “We don't have any—”
    But he was already opening the scuffed and thumbed notebook that was his 'slate'. “Now, what name shall I put down? Mr and Mrs George, from the lake of the same name?”
    My mother had punitively reverted to her maiden name after my father abandoned her with me still in her arms and Anne-Marie 'under her heart'. To avoid confusion and comment she had entered me in school as Jean-Luc LaPointe, not using my father's name. “LaPointe,” I said.
    “...Mr and Mrs LaPointe,” he droned as he carefully printed the name at the top of a page. “The LaPointes from France, I assume?”
    “My grandfather came from Canada. We're part Indian.”
    “Oh-oh. Not one of those tribes notorious for scalping shopkeepers and making off with his penny candies!”
    “No, not that kind.”
    “Whew! Talk about your close calls! So that's fifteen cents for one jar of butter of the peanut variety...” he wrote, “...and five cents for a loaf of bread; size: small; age: one day old. Neonate bread, the bakers call it.” He closed the slate with a snap and waggled his thick eyebrows up and down above his huge eyes.
    When I returned to our apartment with the bread, the peanut butter, and the quarter still intact, I had to explain to my mother that we were down on Mr Kane's slate and didn't have to pay until our check came in.
    “What check?”
    “I don't know.”
    “And he gave you credit, just like that?”
    “I guess he gives everybody credit. The boys said he's a Jew and he doesn't give credit, but he does. He has a book that he calls his slate.”
    “H'm!” She didn't like the sound of that. She hated feeling beholden. Especially to strangers. “It'll be a hot day in hell before I go begging from strangers! What were you thinking of, Jean-Luc?”
    “I don't know, I just—”
    But she said never mind, she'd straighten things out in the morning.
    We ate our peanut butter sandwiches at the kitchen table from which I had carefully cleared the paper plates and napkins so they could be replaced exactly where they had been for our Saint Patrick's Day party. I could tell that Mother didn't like my fussing that way. She was seething inside over something, so I kept my head down and didn't say anything. But Anne-Marie kept eyeing the bottle of lime soda. I told her we had to save it for the party, so everything would be green.
    Mother sniffed. “Party! If I could find our bottle opener among all