Her exultation spent, Nora summoned herself back to earth, only to find her words, or her attitude—or both—had summoned Willy into space. The 'thank you' she planned to finish with, died on her lips. Willy stood detached: neither seeing nor hearing her. With her breath caught in her throat, Nora held up her hand, as if that motion in itself would stop the falling dominoes that were sending Willy to wherever it was he went. It did no good. Her mind awhirl, Nora wondered if she'd caused this, guilt rising like a spring tide, encroaching on her joy.
Nora bit her lip. Guilt receded into helplessness. Pussy-footing around Willy Wonka was all so tricky. No wonder he holed up in his Factory, if the least little mention of the least little thing had this effect on him. Dropping her hand, Nora let go her lip. This wasn't working. Looking at it pragmatically, the arrangement wasn't sustainable… for either side. Charlie would be so disappointed. It was only gardens she'd been talking about… innocuous little gardens, and she'd been saying nice things. How could a subject so benign have such a malignant result?
Nora searched her mind for a clue that would change the situation—she couldn't disappoint Charlie—and found Terence's earlier words echoing: 'Pretend you like him.' She'd thought then that the operative word was like, but she could see now it was him.
Guilt re-entered, tipping its hat, and introducing her to remorse. Nora saw what Terence was getting at, her shoulders sagging to find she'd lapsed again. Every time she thought she'd made it past this, she'd find she'd circled back to the comfortable clutches of the icon—the icon she insisted Willy be, the easy way to think of him—but that wasn't him: he wasn't the town's success or its demise; her family's savior or destroyer; he wasn't his candy; or his Factory; or his out-of-style, stylish clothes; or his odd haircut; or even the beautiful, breathtaking garden creation before her. He was a person, like her, with his own past: a past some of whose events she's only learned of last night—was it really only last night?—and most of what she'd learned, small glimpses that they were, made her shudder: that lot; those braces; his mother's disappearance; his father's desertion; Cyn's death. Those things made her cold. Cold—the opposite of this Factory, where everything was warm. They were hard, when everything here was easy. They were like… stones. And Nora's eyes went glassy, as she remembered the stones. The stones her family told her that Willy, when asked about them, glossed over. The stones… set in what was once the garden of what was once Willy's home.
The garden… Nora stood as still as Willy. Who knew what the man remembered? Good… or bad? The thought sent chills down the back of Nora's neck. She turned to look for help. Eshle stood across the river, the concern on his face and in his posture, even from this distance, a giveaway to his feelings. Others, seeing him, turned from their work, looking the same. It helped Nora to see; to know. His workers loved him, even if Willy Wonka was blind to it, or discounted it. But Eshle was over there, and she was over here, and fixing this was up to her. Nora turned back in time to see Willy shiver. She'd do something. He had, for her. Swallowing, she moved toward him, touching his elbow when he didn't move, taking a step back so as not to crowd him. She understood dignity well enough, not least the tending to its preservation.
Willy startled and made a quarter-turn.
"Can we go down? Walk in it?" Nora suggested.
It took a moment. A re-hefting of the walking-stick, a re-ordering of the layers—mostly in his head—but standing straight, shoulders back, Willy soon had it done. It was nice of her. Pretending he hadn't been gone. He knew he had. If he had more blood in his veins than he did, the paren would see the blush whose heat he felt, but he was off the hook. He only had the blood he had. If she did notice, he would pass off the change in his pallor to the reflections of his surroundings. But she didn't notice. The embarrassment he felt, and she didn't see, still burned. This was all a mistake. Except for Charlie.
"Of course you can." Canned cheerfulness, an old standby. "It's where you'll live." He looked away, before looking back. The old standby left a sour taste in his mouth. "Chutes or ladders?"
"Chutes… or ladders?" echoed Nora, confused.
"To go down." Willy sounded forlorn. "I'm fresh out of barrels."
Felix lounged against the door jamb between the kitchen and the living room, an overstuffed tuna salad sandwich balanced in his hands. Wilted lettuce poked from half-eaten slabs of bread; a bitten-into pickle piece threatening to fall.
"Why are ya sorry, and who can't ya help?"
Freddie jumped in his chair as if the phone had really exploded.
"Wha?" Freddie's hand went to his heart before he saw it was only his only son. "Where did you come from?"
"Sorry, Pop— don't have a coronary. I knew it was your day off and I came over to raid the fridge." Felix took a step into the room.
"Get back in the kitchen with that thing— and hey! That sandwich's my lunch!"
"Not any morree," drawled Felix, in an accent he wished sounded French. "So why are ya sorry, and who can't ya help?" Taking another hefty bite, Felix waited for the answer, but he did step back.
"No one. Wrong number."
"Muh?"
"Wrong. Number."
Finishing chewing, Felix narrowed his eyes.
"Kinda a long phone call for a wrong number. Ya sure said it enough times." There was som'in' fishy going on here, and not just the sandwich he was eating.
"Lixer, it was a wrong number, and it's too early for lunch."
"And too late for breakfast, but I haven't had either, so I guess this is brunch."
Freddie crossed the room and joined his son in the kitchen. Glad as he was to see him, there was more going wrong here this morning than just the phone call.
"Did you leave me anything?" Not much, Freddie saw, but Mabel was marketing, so the food issue was no biggie. But maybe the other issue was. His arm hanging atop the open fridge door, Freddie pivoted to check his son's reaction.
"Aren't you supposed to be at work now?"
A few more bites would polish off the sandwich, and Felix took one. He ran through scenarios in his head while he chewed, but the truth was the easiest to keep straight. And he could blame Wonka.
"The newspaper decided to give me the day off. That worthless piece of shit Wonka's not putting in a park."
"Don't call him that. Didn't you check?"
"Wonka? Or piece of shit? And no. Why should I? And why shouldn't I call him that? Wonka has the money to put in a park. The fuckin' miser should put in a park."
Freddie sighed. "He did me a favor once. Forget it's Wonka. How 'bout you should check because it's your job?"
Felix's scowl would stop traffic. That asshole James had said the same thing. Did they crib off each other's notes or somethin'? The last bite of sandwich disappeared, and Felix came to grips with the rest of the untold story he thought he'd spill.
"Yeah, well, I guess the newspaper agrees. They gave me the rest of the week off, too." A stray bit of celery glued by a speck of mayonnaise lingered at the corner of his mouth; Felix wiped them off with the tip of his finger, sucking it clean. "What favor?"
Freddie sat down at the kitchen table across from his son. Messing with Wonka was a mistake, and everyone in town with a brain knew it.
"He wrote me a letter. I might have hurt a lot of people." Freddie leaned forward. The sandwich notwithstanding, Felix started a lot of things he didn't finish. This might be the latest in a long line.
"You can tell me, son. Did they fire you?"
"A letter? D'ya still have it?"
Freddie did, but it was last thing he wanted Felix to see. He shook his head.
"Too bad, Pop. I'd love to get my hands on a sample of that crumb's shitty handwriting. How's that? I didn't call him anything." Felix pushed back from the table. He hated Wonka, but the paper's editor had told him Wonka's spokeswoman had said anyone could make a mistake; it was whether they learned from the mistake that mattered. No one would know that unless Felix kept his job, so thanks to that piss-ant Wonka's spokeswoman, he'd kept his job.
"You called him a crumb. Answer the question. Did they?"
"They didn't. He really is moving a house."
The choice of a chute or a ladder held no appeal for Nora. "Um," she started, with doubtful eyes, "is there some other way down? Perhaps?"
The flit of a smile crossed Willy's face at her anticipated reluctance. In this room, there were no chutes—maybe he should add some—but the ladder was fun. Ah, well.
"This lift'll do it," Willy said, maneuvering around her.
It heartened Nora to see the smile, however brief, and she fell into step.
"Don't you mean elevator?"
She chased her question with a grin, but with an imperious look, Willy shook himself like a rooster ruffling his feathers.
"A lift is inside. An elevator is outside. Everyone knows that. You've never heard of a grain lift, have you? And you've seen the Great Glass Elevator outside."
Willy delivered these observations in a mockingly cheerful voice, with a concluding smile that was most definitely fake. Those things, Nora was willing to let slide, happy to play along with whatever strategy Willy devised to keep going— because Nora had no doubt keeping-going was a struggle. The same way she'd earlier felt the energy he derived from the river, she now felt as clearly his desire to bolt. But past or no past, bolting or no bolting, dripping condescension and snippy delivery were uncalled for. Nora wouldn't tolerate it.
"So you're saying your Great Glass Elevator suffers from an ongoing identity crisis."
Tilting his head, Willy frowned as he led her to a structure rising out of the wall. Identity crisis? His Elevator? Was she daft? Willy stayed silent, but his expression shouted his affronted 'What!' for him.
Nora held up her arms like a balance, holding her hands flat, tipping them up and down as she spoke. "Inside— outside— lift— elevator— how does it know which it is?"
His face a study in perturbed puzzlement, Willy gave the presented problem a quick once over. Then he giggled—once—and his smile turned genuine. If anyone were suffering an identity crisis around here, it was him. Reaching the structure, with a flourish that was almost an afterthought, Willy leaned over and pushed the call button.
"This, dear lady," he began suavely, "is most certainly a lift— a sad little thing— a poor, pathetic cousin to my lovely GiGi, limited as it is to merely going up and down in this architecturally attractive, mostly decorative shaft." He pointed with the top of his walking stick to the other side of the fall. "See? The match of this is there."
Nora saw, and nodded.
"Gum drops. As in goody." Planting it before him, Willy plopped his hands on top of his walking-stick while they waited. "In contrast, the Great Glass, even inside, can go any-which-way it likes, and if it likes, an any-which-way the Great Glass can go is outside, and that, my dear lady, makes the Great Glass, always an elevator."
His mouth a thin line, but with the corners turned up, Willy finished his pronouncement by shaking the hair around his face, his nose in the air, as if he were dispelling clouds.
"Great," mumbled Nora, as the lift arrived.
Disbelieving—but possibly, after so many 'great's of his own—with narrowed eyes aglint, Willy swung his head to see if Charlie's Mater had really meant to make a play on that word. By the chagrin he saw glowing on her face, he concluded she had, and feeling magnanimous that his elevator explanation had triumphed in defending GiGi's honor, in a fit of graciousness, Willy offered Nora his arm as they stepped inside.
Disbelieving, Nora disguised her surprise and ditched her doubts, deftly taking Willy up on his offer, her forearm floating a micrometre above the velvet that covered his, the tips of her fingers barely touching the top of his periwinkle-gloved wrist.
The day was ticking by, with no sign of Nora. Terence had expected to see her by the early side of mid-morning, and it was almost lunchtime. He glanced up the hill. Maybe 'work with' meant 'work with' and not 'drive the truck again' but Terence wouldn't have put money on that.
With nothing emerging from the Factory but smoke, Terence turned back to the project. Once the flurry over his clothes had died down—he knew he should have changed into the usual, but George, God curse him, had talked him out of it—he'd explained about the need to increase the pace, and the students had happily obliged. The house was coming down nicely, but the crates were stacking up.
Cheated of his planned puppets—the mindless miscreants—Dr. Wonka stared at the phone, wondering if he had the strength to lift it this morning one more time. If he did, it would be to call a limo service to arrange for a car. He'd need one if he pursued this: he'd given up his Triumph TR3 roadster years ago.
Dr. Wonka smiled, revealing a good many of his painstakingly preserved, yellowish teeth.
His Triumph.
The dull ache in his lower back nudged him from his deliberations. He didn't begrudge the ache, it took his mind off the nausea, but neither took his mind off the stabbing pains that increasingly joined the mêlée.
His triumph was locking The Boy in a life as lonely as his.
That couldn't be coming undone. They were both too old for that. Between the twinges, it crossed Dr. Wonka's mind that the lights last night might have been a fluke; one of the flaky workers, flipping a switch, for fun. That might explain it. The unmanaged pain was warping his thoughts. He needn't pursue this. No one else wanted to. Maybe they were on to something. The sweet scent of Chloroform, his unfailing friend, would smooth what ailed him, as it had before. Oblivious, he sniffed deeply.
The angry stab of agony blossoming in his gut brought Dr. Wonka back, his hand flashing, fingers clawing at his side in a futile attempt to pull away the burning dagger. Doubled over, tears stinging his eyes, Dr. Wonka panted for breath. The pain brought clarity. The lights had stayed on, and a house was moving. This was no dream. This was as real as the pain shooting through him, and pain was what this was all about. In the time he had left, in the smallest crevices of his dark heart, Dr. Wonka vowed that the triumph of his life would not be overturned. If it weren't for The Boy, Mina would still be his.
Thanks for reading, please review, and enjoy your day. I do not own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended. And that applies to the nod to 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' as well.
dionne dance: Parens: they do have their advantages, and I guess that's one of them. Thank you. LinkWonka88: A partial answer in broad strokes; details to follow. Thanks for your review.
