She offered a bigger head tip.

"We could spend some time together, go to the zoo, see the penguins and the ducks..."

She nodded recognizably.

Yes, she'd like that.

Again, I thought about the phone calls I needed to make. But for the first time, as I held Spring's hand and saw that something I did for her had even the tiniest positive impact, I wondered about what I was hoping to accomplish with those phone calls.

Chapter 9.

Right Where I Was After spending all of Tuesday playing with Spring, I knew I had to at least try to discover what Diane had left behind in Chicago. I called Mr. Barnes and he read Diane's records to me. They offered no leads and listed me as Diane's only contact. He also mentioned that she had failed to complete any of the medical questions " in case I was interested."

I made a second call to a decorator. I described what I wanted, and for a few extra dollars, they could get to it right away. It would cost me again to return the apartment to normal when I moved, but until then, it would be worth it. I wanted to do something tangible for Spring, even though she might only be with me for a very short period of time. The painters arrived that very afternoon.

Diane had left only a few clues behind and these clues had to answer every question for the rest of Spring's life. That was an awful lot to carry in an old relic like her suitcase. While I would have preferred waiting for the painters to leave and for Spring to go to bed before opening it in private, I found that I no longer could. I carried the bag to the kitchen to examine, while the painters worked and Spring watched a movie.

The old relic had been places and had the stickers to prove it; blue and gold stickers written in German, a green and white one from Switzerland, a blue patch from Morocco hand-sewn onto the leather. There were others. On one side, a blue and white sticker displayed a palm tree and a harvest moon, but it didn't look very old, and there was an outline of another beneath it. The suitcase looked like something a man would have picked out. It certainly didn't represent Diane.

I hovered over the top of it with a letter opener ready to destroy the latch. I slipped the letter opener beneath the small brass clasp and wiggled it back and forth until I felt the mechanism twist. With more pressure, the latch popped onto the kitchen tile. I did the same to the other side, this time sending the brass latch flying toward the sink. I jiggled the suitcase. It wouldn't open and now I had broken a piece of lock into each latch. Fortunately, one of the painters came by at that point to ask a question. After asking me if I wanted help, he removed a knife and grabbed the suitcase. He slid his knife into one latch and then the other. Pop, pop. "No charge," he said, then returned to his job.

I opened the suitcase, expecting answers, but I was unable to ask the right questions. On the top, a shirt, turned inside-out and labeled A Taste of Chicago, covered some of the other items. There was a heavy purple sweatshirt from Northwestern University and a Bears ski hat. I set the items on the countertop before noticing something inside the hat. It was a picture of Diane standing in front of Lake Michigan and, based on her hairstyle, had to be a few years old. Also in the suitcase was a black, porous rock like a walnut with a hole the size of my little finger, a few paperbacks, a college textbook on photography, an old candle, a Cubs baseball cap, and a broken aluminum thermos that rattled when it shook. In the bottom of the case, a deck of cards, still unopened, featured a Route 66 highway sign.

I stared at the pile of stuff. There was nothing here that was going to help me; certainly nothing that was going to connect me to someone who would take responsibility for Spring. The pile seemed to be mocking me, reminding me how little I knew about Diane. Of course there were messages here, the way there are in attics or storage closets. But I couldn't read these messages. Diane had said she had sold everything clearly, nothing here except maybe the old thermos and the deck of cards had any use. Why had she locked them up in an ancient suitcase and toted them on the airplane flight that would start her new life?

While the decorators finished, Spring and I spent the entire next day out of the apartment. It was amazing what you could get, if you were willing to pay a 30% surcharge. In the late afternoon, after she "talked me into" a trip to Haagen-Dazs, I took her to her room.

She seemed very confused.

"Look," I said, "it's your new room. It's yellow! Yellow bed, yellow dresser, a yellow rocker, even yellow walls. And we'll hang some paper up over there in case you're ever...inspired."

She looked a little stupefied, like she was wondering where I had put her old room.

"And look there," I said, pointing. "What's that?"

On two of the walls, I had cartoons painted. One wall featured a line of ducks playing with a teddy bear.

"What's that, Spring?" I said, pointing.

Spring stared at the image on the other wall. Painted in purple was a simple box, quartered and a simple sliver of a moon.

"... Harold?"

"Yes, Harold's window."

Spring sat on her new bed. Her expression was more animated and she seemed intrigued with her new room.

"Look here," I said, opening the closet door. Harold stood inside peeking out at the moon and still wearing his pajamas. "He's in your closet..."

Spring laughed spontaneously. It sent an unfamiliar thrill through me. I realized that I had been anxious about her reaction.

But then her brow furrowed. "Where's Mommy going to sleep?" she said.

My mood sank and I went to sit next to her on the bed.

"She's going to stay right next to you while you sleep. I picked up Diane's picture and handed it to her. "She'll always be with you... here."

I put my hand over my heart. I knew we were going to have this conversation many times. Spring touched my hand.

"Here?"

"Yes, she's inside me."

Then she put her hand over her heart. "I can feel her."

"As long as your heart beats, you know she's inside of you."

Spring stared. She was clearly confused, but she was trying to understand. Then she climbed off the bed and pulled a book from her new shelf. She sat in the rocker and leafed through the pages.

"You okay if I go inside?" I said.

She nodded from over the top of the book.

I returned to the suitcase and once again piled the contents onto the countertop. There had to be a reason Diane kept this stuff.

"I'm trying Diane," I said to my vision of her. "I'm trying to understand. I know it's a slow process, but you've got to give me more than an E, a suitcase full of clothes and an old thermos."

I went through the items again. Maybe they weren't her things and she was holding them for someone The shirts could have belonged to anyone. And then the picture. Why would she keep a picture of herself? It looked like it meant something to someone... maybe Spring's father? An old boyfriend? I put the contents back in the suitcase and went to have a talk with the urn.

"What is it, Diane? What does all that stuff mean?" I was very agitated. I suppose I just needed to release some of the tension. "Is it supposed to tell me something? Well, it isn't good enough. I need more. If you want me to help Spring, I need more." I was pacing and stupidly half-waited for an answer.

"Who are you talking to?"

Busted."Sorry, Spring. I guess I was talking to myself."

She looked disappointed. "Oh, I thought you said Mommy's name."

That's when I noticed I was feeling a little hot and needed some air. My chest felt tight and I tried to inhale. At first, it felt like allergies, when you can only get so much oxygen. I decided to sit down. I must have looked bad because Spring seemed very concerned and sidled directly next to me. Maybe I was having an allergic reaction. To the level of responsibility.

I took a deep breath and smiled. "It's okay, Spring. I'm just tired."

She hugged my leg.

"I'll be okay," I said again, feeling a strong need to reassure her. Staring into her eyes, I could see a thousand questions behind them, but the most important one remained: "When will Mommy be home?"

There was a very real chance that I was all Spring had which meant that I instantly needed a neural link in child rearing, something the people in the Matrix movies could provide if they weren't, you know, fictional. I could bandage her knee and maybe handle soothing her after a simple nightmare the kind of thing you could pick up from an ad for cold medicine or greeting cards. If it got more complicated than that like dealing with grief, for instance I was way out of my depth.

I went through a mental checklist of my qualifications: I could help arrange Spring's stuffed animals, and I knew what she liked for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mr. Barnes said that Spring could remain at his daycare facility as long as necessary, which would be a huge help once we started doing that again. I knew that Spring's favorite stuffed toy was a Teddy Bear disguised as a duck, and that she liked to draw.

Did any of that qualify me to parent her in any way? It hardly qualified me to be a Saturday night babysitter. I hadn't been paying enough attention while Diane was alive. I didn't think I needed to. I figured that my role in Spring's life would be to provide comic relief at most.

Spring stared at me, probably still unsure of my condition. That made two of us.

"Can you go get your crayons? I have a special request."

At first, she looked confused, but went to get them anyway. She returned with blue, yellow, orange, and eggplant and handed me the blue crayon.

"What?" I said. "I wanted you to draw. You want me to draw something?"

She nodded.

"What?"

"A peng-win."

Never known my for my artistic ability, I attempted to draw a peng-win.

"Ta daaa."

"That's not a peng-win." she said.

"You try then."

She did. Hers looked similar, only with a happy face and wavy sticks for arms. Great, we're drawing at the same level. I told her I liked it. After she drew some more, she grew tired and crawled onto my lap. I held her close to me.

All parents started as amateurs, right? At least I had a decent lap.

"We'll figure it out, Spring. I promise," I said. It was at least the second time I'd said it to her and the eightieth time I'd said it to myself. But she didn't hear me. It wasn't even 6:00, but she had already fallen asleep on me.

I'd been avoiding giving Spring a bath for the sake of both of us, but the next night I knew I had to face that particular demon. I hadn't participated in the bathing process since my encounter with the cabinet door. After dinner, I told Spring that it was time for a bath.

She simply said, "Bath? Okay," and walked down the hall.

I finished cleaning up the dishes and then walked slowly to join her. I could hear the water running in the bathroom and pushed open the door. Spring sat inside the tub with her clothes on, shoes and all.

"What are you doing?" I said, tamping down both laughter and consternation.

"My hair," she said. Her teeth chattered.

It was true. Just like her mother had done, Spring had created something approximating a shampoo fin.

"Did you decide to do your laundry, too?"

She shrugged and my control slipped away. "Let's take those off," I said, laughing. I'm not sure that she did this to be funny, but Spring seemed pleased with my response. I added an inch or so of warm water to the freezing shallow bath. I removed her shoes and hesitated again. If I was going to bathe her, she was going to have to be naked. As odd as this sounds, I tried looking away while pulling her shirt over her head, but the shampoo from the fin covered her eyes and we both started to panic. Trying to remove the clothes without paying attention to a naked, little girl wasn't working, and Spring had decided not to cooperate. I kept expecting the FBI to break down my door: (The explosive sound of my front door being

battered.)

"Mr. Hunter?"

"Yes, I'm Mr... "

"You're under arrest for giving a bath to a half-

naked little girl sitting in your guest tub.

"But"

"No buts, Mr. Hunter... "

Diane would have definitely been laughing by now. I pulled the soggy shirt over Spring's head and blotted her face with a towel. I could blot without panicking. Blotting was easy. I could even over-blot before moving on to the toughie: removal of her pants and underwear.