“I want to be there for you,” she said. “I really do!”
“Come this afternoon,” I managed. “My uncle is arriving any moment.”
“How is your grandfather?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him yet today.”
Now she was the one who was silent.
“He’s doing what he has to do,” I added, just to kill the silence.
“Everyone, especially my parents, feels terrible for him to have suffered so many losses. And for you, too, of course.”
“Thank them,” I said. I heard Uncle Bobby’s footsteps on the stairway. “I’ve got to go. I think my uncle has arrived.”
“I’ll be there later,” she said.
A few moments after I hung up, Uncle Bobby knocked on my door and then stepped in. I was sitting on my bed, my back against the pillows. He didn’t say hello first. He just embraced me and held me for a long time. I laid my head on his shoulder and cried, and I could hear him fighting back his own tears.
“Hey, Clair de Lune,” he said. Because my name was Clara Sue, he said he always thought of me when he heard that song and told me that thinking of me was like remembering the most beautiful moonlight.
“Hi,” I managed in a voice so small and unrecognizable that I thought it came from someone else.
“Pretty unreal. All of it,” he said. I nodded. “You’re sure getting older. You look more and more like your mother,” he continued.
“Do I?”
“Your dad was a handsome guy, but I think you’re lucking out looking like my sister, with your auburn hair and those hazel eyes. You have her button nose. You’re her height, too. What are you, five-six, seven?”
“Seven,” I said.
“You should be on the cover of teen magazines. Of course, I’m a little biased about it.”
He tried a smile, but he couldn’t hold it long, and I couldn’t help him by smiling back. He held on to my left foot and stared down at the bed. I thought Uncle Bobby had the kind of face that would never look old. He hadn’t gained an ounce since I had last seen him. He still had that soft-looking light brown hair, always a little too long for Grandpa’s taste, and those striking sea-blue eyes with eyelashes that I knew women envied. I was aware of how much he loved Willie, who, despite Grandpa’s attitude about the career he was pursuing, enjoyed Uncle Bobby’s singing and demonstrations of new dance steps. He even tried to imitate him. Uncle Bobby always brought interesting things to us whenever he did visit—dolls from countries he had gone to for shows, toys that were handmade, simple things like magic boxes and puzzles and hand-painted yo-yos.
“Is Grandpa back yet?” I asked.
“No.”
“You know where he is and what he’s doing?” I said. From the way he stared at me and from how his eyes were darkening, I realized he knew.
“I don’t think he’s himself right now. Who could blame him?”
“Do you know about the poisoned boy? Do you know all he’s doing for this strange little boy?”
“Yes. He told me when I called him before I left St. Louis,” he said.
“He told you? I don’t understand, Uncle Bobby. Why is he so concerned about him? Why isn’t he thinking more about Willie?”
“He’s thinking about him, too. He’s just . . . afraid,” Uncle Bobby said. I couldn’t imagine a stranger thing for him to have said.
“Afraid? Grandpa Arnold? Of what?”
“Of dying of sadness. You’re the only one left whom he really loves.”
“He loves you!”
“Only because he has to, because I’m his son, but it was really only you and Willie after my sister and my mother died. Now he’s lost Willie, and he’s like a ship that’s taken on too much water. I think he’s lost and confused, too, but today I realized he thinks that saving the little boy will help him save himself and continue to give him the strength he needs to be here for you, too.”