The Pantry Door, Julie Steimle [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

but the sparkle in his eyes glistened also with tears. “How is my clever Kathleen?”

She shook her head, her tears rolling down her face as she wished with all her might that Nissa’s ladder would pop up so she could climb down to him. “Terrible without you! Why did you go?”

Sighing, he shrugged. “It is the cost of love. Mortality is necessary in order for that love to continue on forever.”

“I don’t understand,” Katy said, weeping as she wished to be in his arms.

“Not for many years yet, will you,” he said, “But one day you will.”

Wiping her face with her fingers, Katy still cried. People always said, ‘one day.’ She wanted that day to be now.

Young Grandpa Schmidt called up with the same comforting, wise, yet playful voice. “Go on, my sweet heir. It is time for you to go home. Your best friend is waiting for you.”

“Nissa?” Katy lifted her head, not sure she heard right. “I’ll get to see her again?”

“Oh, yes,” he said with a smile. “That is definite.”

With a joy that welled up in her chest, Katy jumped away from the window and rushed to the door. She climbed down the cupboard and back into the kitchen, not even noticing how the window closed right behind her, the curtains were drawn, and the doors shut under a silent command, even to the cupboard ceiling where Katy turned and drew in breath as her heart pounded loudly. She would see Nissa again.

Not even bothering to hide the noise her feet made on the floor, Katy rushed back to the basement and hurried to bed, hoping she would see Nissa before she left.

*

“Kathleen!”

Katy rolled over and rubbed her eyes.

“Kathleen! Breakfast! And hurry. We have to leave before the sun gets high.”

Moaning, she realized there would be no way to sneak into the cupboard with her mother there making breakfast. But a sudden hope welled up as Katy wondered if her grandpa meant she would see Nissa through the window instead. It would be a switch, but stranger things have happened.

So, she got up, hastily dressed, and packed her bag. Katy then made the bed, taking special care since her grandmother didn’t like climbing the stairs in her old age: her back and knees could not take it anymore. With her load, Katy climbed up to the main floor and paused at the door. Glancing once at the window, Katy saw her gnome friend standing there. He held out a piece of paper, rapping on the glass.

Careful not to knock him off his feet as she tilted the window open, Katy reached out, letting him place the paper on her palm. Without a word, he bowed with a smile and walked off under the bushes in the grass. She closed the window and then peered at the paper. It was a tiny sketch, better drawn than her childish scribbles, of himself and then one of her playing her flute in the window. With a smile, Katy tucked the picture inside her bag and walked to the door, opening it.

“Katy, we need to hurry,” her mother said, rushing from the stove with pancakes and a jar of jelly.

Reluctant to even step into the room, Katy did, setting her bag down near the box freezer. “Is Grandma up?”

“She’s getting dressed, dear.” Her mother nearly jerked the drawer open, grabbing up forks and knives from it. Whipping around, she set them on the table. Looking up at Katy, she said, “You didn’t forget anything?”

With a resentful grunt, Katy slid into a seat. “No.”

But then her mind flashed on the mythology book and her pictures. Katy had left them inside the living room. She popped up from her seat and rushed into that room to get them.

“Go and put your things in the car, then,” her mother said, still rushing about to set the table.

Katy didn’t respond. She found her book where she left it and turned the picture she had drawn over to look at the unfinished sketch. Partly, she wished she had a picture of Nissa also, but that was too late.

Glancing outside, Katy blinked. Or maybe it wasn’t too late.

Carrying book under arm, Katy hurried outside with it and her pictures and peered up at the top of the house. No window. But she shook her head, telling herself, ‘Of course not. It’s the wrong side.’ She ran down the steps and around to the other side, stood on the back walk, and stared where the window ought to be.

Just roof.

No window.

Katy’s shoulders drooped. Her grandfather wouldn’t lie to her, but why wasn’t Nissa there?

Disappointment weighted so heavy on her shoulders as she trudged the rest of the way to her mother’s car. Opening the passenger side, Katy dropped her book face down on the seat and then slammed the door.

“Slamming the door is not necessary,” she heard her mother say from inside the house.

Frowning, Katy kicked the ground and trudged back to the house, up the walk, and then inside to eat breakfast and say goodbye to her grandmother.

Grandma Schmidt gave Katy a hug.

“Mom, we’re not leaving yet. Let’s sit down to eat.” Katy’s mother pulled out a chair to offer her.

But Grandma Schmidt patted Katy on the head and whispered, “Patience.”

Katy blinked, wondering if her grandmother knew of her conversation with Grandpa Schmidt the night before.

But her mother watched them; her eyes saying hugs can be saved for after breakfast, so both of them parted. Katy took her seat and Gran hers.

After grace, they ate with the usual morning silence, a word here, a comment there, and a brief dialogue where Grandma Schmidt asked Katy’s mom if she had everything she needed. Inside Katy chuckled at how her own mother was still treated like a child needing a reminder to make sure she completed everything. She supposed that even her mom had to be nagged. Of course she had learned the habit from Gran.

They finished and cleared. Katy then hugged her grandmother, promising to write. Then she whispered, “Let me know if you see any pixies or gnomes. Ok?”

With a grin, Grandma Schmidt nodded. “Of course.”

“And let me know if the Gibson’s harass you,” Katy’s mom added.

Katy glanced at her mother, but nodded to agree. “Yeah, Grandma. Call us.”

Katy’s mother smiled, then steered them both to the door.

“Come and visit any time!” Grandma Schmidt said, following them out.

“I’ll try,” Katy’s mom said, but they continued to the car.

“Oh! Wait! My bag!” Kat dashed back into the kitchen to get it.

“But I thought you put it in before breakfast.” Her mother already fell back into her tired mother mode, watching Katy rush back into the house.

Snatching the bag off the floor, Katy hurried to the cupboard for one last look. No breeze, no light, no nothing. She frowned. Hefting her bag up on her arm, Katy walked back to where her mother and grandmother were waiting. Grandma Schmidt had a sympathetic smile, but she said nothing. Her mother, placed her arm on Katy’s shoulder and led her back to the car, all the while Katy glanced at the smooth house roof with no magic window. There would be no goodbye. No seeing Nissa again. Maybe her grandfather was just wrong. Maybe the pixies had influenced him to lie. But that idea seemed foolish, and Katy banished it in an instant. She sighed and bade the house good-bye. Her grandfather simply had been wrong, or maybe it wasn’t her grandfather at all but some magical man who took on his voice and pretended to be him.

With that sad thought, Katy opened the back door and tossed her bag on the back seat and closed the door. The magic had ended. Perhaps, in a later visit, she might see Nissa again. Maybe during Christmas, she could sneak up and find Nissa visiting her family. Surely during Christmas break, Nissa would go home to see her family. That had to be what he meant.

Katy climbed into the passenger seat and shoved her book to the middle. It bumped against one of her mother’s usual books, knocking it onto the floor. She pulled on her seatbelt and exhaled a long sigh while her mother climbed into the other side, getting ready for the long journey home.

“Your father has planned for us to go to the state fair as soon as we get home. Hopefully, it won’t be too late when we arrive,” her mother said.

“Hmm.” Katy leaned on the window edge, already feeling the shaking of the car engine when her mother turned the key.

The silence was awkward. Katy heard her mother inhale and exhale without anything to say either. So, as the car started and she shifted out of park to drive, the pair of them rolled off Grandma Schmidt’s pebble driveway onto the gravel road. Katy waved to her grandmother with her mother, but Katy’s eyes were on the smooth roof, hoping to catch a glimpse of the window and the room with Nissa in it.

But no window and no room.

And soon they rolled out of sight beyond the house, and into the street that would take them to the freeway.

Over the cow grate, past the barbed wire, up the hump and onto the onramp, the car picked up speed and soon was traveling back south toward home. Eleven miles along, and they passed Fillmore. Katy’s eyes lingered on the green freeway sign. Then all she saw for miles was grass and perhaps the distant volcano that had lain dormant for so long.

“Kathleen? Katy? Could you please roll up the window? I want to put the air conditioning on.”

Katy turned and glanced at her mother, sighing once more. Her eyes fell on her myth book. She drew in a breath and nodded, then rolled up the window as her mother had asked. While her mother fiddled with the air conditioning switches, then the radio knobs, Katy opened up the book, taking her drawings and tucking them in the back.

“Won’t reading in the car make you nauseated?” her mother asked, barely glancing at it.

“I’ll be fine,” Katy replied. “I’m just looking at pictures.”

Her mother glanced at it again then jerked the wheel with another look. The car swerved to the right, weaving on the road. Lurching, Katy screamed, her book falling down her legs to the floor.

Right away, her mother pulled to the side of the road, panting hard and clutching her steering wheel while braking.

“Are you trying to kill us?” Katy grabbed her chest and clutched her seat belt, grateful it existed.

But her mother turned with a full frontal stare at Katy’s face. Then she grabbed Katy’s arm, holding it up with her eyes fixed on the bracelet Nissa had given her.

“What is the matter with you?” Katy jerked out of her mother’s hold.

Katy’s mother was shaking. With a trembling finger, she pointed down at Katy’s myth book. “Where did you get that?”

Blinking, still wary of what just happened, Katy replied, “My friend left it behind. Grandma said I should keep it.”

Her mother’s eyes went wider. “Your friend? Who?”

Sighing, she wondered if her mother would believe she could have any other friends beside punks. It crossed her mind that her mother might even think she made pals with the Gibsons.

Katy cleared her throat and said, “My friend, Nissa. She gave me this too.” She showed her mother the bracelet. “See? It says—”

“Katie & Nisa, Best Friends—Friends Forever,” her mother murmured, but she was not reading it. She was looking at Katy, but her eyes were inspecting Katy’s face.

Katy pulled back. “What? I can’t have friends?”

Closing her eyes, Katy’s mother shook her head.

“No, I’m fine with that. But—” She then opened her eyes and looked around at the car seat. “Where did my book go?”

With a blink then a shrug, Katy bent down and picked it off the floor. “Sorry. I bumped it. It should be ok.”

But as Katy handed it back to her mother, her eyes fell on something she had seen year after year—yet now it was like seeing