Seventeen Against the Dealer

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You’ve finally got a date,” he said.

  Dicey shook her head impatiently. “My grandmother’s sick.”

  He didn’t seem troubled by that. “Well, maybe this elusive suitor will find time to see you next weekend. Although—unless you’ve been getting up to things you haven’t told me about, and when you’d have time to, I can’t imagine—if I were you I’d wonder how serious this boyfriend is. Don’t you? Don’t you wonder what he’s up to when he’s so obviously not here? What he’s up to and with whom?”

  Dicey didn’t think Cisco had any business commenting on her private life, and she wasn’t about to answer him in any way. Jeff wouldn’t do that anyway.

  “Men are weak,” Cisco said to her. “And women play on that, women know that. If he’s as good-looking as you think, and rich . . .”

  “I never said he was rich.”

  “In that case, you’re right to hold out for better.”

  “I thought you didn’t like rich people anyway.”

  “I don’t. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t marry one. I could probably love one, too, if one loved me. That would be pretty easy, now I think of it. This guy doesn’t have a sister, does he? Or a mother? What’s wrong with your grandmother?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe just a bad flu. We don’t often get sick, so we don’t know what a bad flu is supposed to be like.”

  “You must have good genes, or you must be living right,” Cisco remarked. “Well, I hope your grandmother gets better. I hope it’s not something serious, like cancer.”

  Dicey had never thought of that, and she wished he hadn’t mentioned it. He didn’t look troubled at all by the idea; he looked as pleased with himself as a chipmunk. Maybe he just liked scaring people. “I gotta go,” Dicey said.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Dicey got home, Sammy had gone to work and Maybeth was cleaning up after grilled cheese sandwiches. Dicey sent Maybeth out to do the shopping and finished the lunch cleanup herself. Every now and then she opened the door into Gram’s bedroom. Gram slept on.

  After a while, Dicey took a look at the books and papers she kept spread out on the dining room table—but she couldn’t concentrate. Besides, she didn’t have any reason to concentrate now.

  She went back into the kitchen and piled all the chairs on top of the table. Then she washed the floor with a mop. Gram usually did that a couple of times a week, mopping clean the red-and-white linoleum. While the floor dried, Dicey took an empty bucket into the living room. The bed of ashes in the fireplace had gotten too high; she shoveled about half of them into the bucket and spread the rest around more evenly under the grate. If they could get Gram moved onto the sofa they’d all feel better. Taking to the sofa was what Gram did, the couple of times she’d had a cold bad enough to put her out of commission. At those times, Gram lay on the sofa, with a fire going, blankets spread over her, and a sweater on over her nightgown. She groused and gave orders, read books, and played cribbage. When she was sick, Gram made sure things still went along right.

  Gram was really sick now, seriously sick. Dicey knew it in her bones. She had wanted it not to be true, so she’d let herself turn her back on the worry.

  But Gram said she was getting better, and Gram didn’t tell lies. So maybe Dicey was just letting her imagination get out of hand.

  Dicey sat down again at the dining room table to think about boats, again, but she couldn’t. She guessed she knew when to stop trying. She guessed she could tell when she’d fallen on her face for once and all. She piled the books in one of the cupboards of the sideboard and put her papers away in folders beside them. Closing the cupboard door, she twisted the knob to be sure the latch inside would catch, and hold. Doing that reminded her: They’d found a piece of lace, half-sewn onto a cambric bodice, for a night-gown, Gram had guessed, at the back of one of these deep cupboards, years ago; the materials had been folded and put away, years ago, had been left there in the dark, behind the closed door, like somebody’s old forgotten dreams. Maybeth, Dicey remembered, had tried to save the lace, but it was so old that it had feathered apart even in her gentle fingers. Like old abandoned dreams somebody had put away, closed the door on.

  Dicey wandered back into the kitchen. She lifted the chairs down, placing them around the table. Quietly, she opened the door into Gram’s bedroom.

  Gram’s eyes were open. She was lying flat in bed, her head on a pillow.

  Dicey went into the room, approaching the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  Gram’s hands lay motionless on top of the white bedspread. When she spoke, her voice was as pale as her face. “Stupid question.”

  Dicey knew that, but she didn’t know what else to say. You couldn’t say “You look terrible, what’s wrong with you?” Could you? Gram had a glass of water on the table beside her bed, her light was turned on, she never wanted anything to eat—and she was just lying there, watching Dicey.

  “Can I get you something?” Dicey asked.

  Gram shook her head.

  Dicey stood there, waiting for Gram to say something. Gram lay there, just waiting, Dicey didn’t know for what.

  “Maybeth says you’re not eating much,” Dicey said.

  “Don’t have much appetite, to speak of,” Gram said. She sounded tired, too tired to be asked to talk.

  “You told me you were getting better,” Dicey reminded her grandmother.

  Gram almost smiled, and she pushed herself up a little on the pillow. “I felt a lot worse two days ago. You’re home early.”

  Dicey nodded. She didn’t plan to talk to Gram about the shop. She didn’t think Gram needed to worry about how badly things were going. Dicey looked around her grandmother’s bedroom, a plain room, with just the double bed, the bedside table, a tall bookcase full of books, and the dark wooden bureau. The door to Gram’s bathroom stood partly open, to show the sink and some towels. “Do you want me to get you something to read?” Dicey asked.

  Gram shook her head. “Too tired.”

  “Are you warm enough? Do you want a sweater?”

  “I’m fine,” Gram said.

  At that, Dicey almost lost her temper. “You aren’t fine, anyone can see that. You’re nowhere near fine. What’s wrong with you, Gram?”

  “If I knew, I’d be a doctor, wouldn’t I?” Gram asked. “I’m waiting it out, girl. I’d be pleased if you’d do the same.”

  The shades were pulled down over the windows, making the light in the room gentle, mellow, weak. There was one photograph on Gram’s bureau. Dicey went over to look at it. The young man who had posed for the picture had dark hair and dark, serious eyes. His mouth was a straight line. Dicey turned around with the picture in her hand.

  “Our grandfather,” Dicey said.

  Gram nodded.

  “He was a handsome man,” Dicey said, studying the broad, square jaw. You couldn’t see anything from a picture except what someone looked like; and what someone looked like didn’t necessarily have anything to do with what he acted like, and thought like. Stubborn, she thought, looking at the picture, and serious, and stern—he reminded her of herself, maybe, but not the self she liked best. The collar he wore looked bright white, stiff bright white, and uncomfortable, as if it were bound around his neck too tightly, like a thick collar for an unruly dog.

  “Handsome is,” Gram started to say—until coughing prevented her from finishing the sentence. Dicey stood, looking at the picture, so as not to stare at her grandmother—Gram, sick in bed—while she was coughing like that. Gram finally caught her breath enough to finish the sentence in a choking voice, “as handsome does.”

  Dicey didn’t know about that. Handsome is as handsome is, that was what she thought. She knew that just because someone was handsome didn’t mean he was good, or noble; but it did mean that he was exactly what it said, handsome. You couldn’t say he wasn’t just because you didn’t like the way he acted, or lived.

  She didn’t think she ought to argue with Gram about th
at. She was just standing around in Gram’s room, not doing anything. Standing around made her restless, uneasy. It left her free to think about the things she couldn’t do anything about. Like Gram being sick, or the boat she wasn’t going to build for Mr. Hobart out of the wood she’d already paid for. She was relieved to hear the truck come up the driveway.

  “That’ll be Maybeth. She went shopping,” Dicey told Gram. “Sammy’s at work.” Gram already knew that. “I better help Maybeth unload. Do you want your door open? Or closed?”

  “Closed,” Gram said.

  Maybeth came in with two bags of groceries, which she set down on the table. “It’s cold. Isn’t she awake yet?” She took off her jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. “You washed the floor, Dicey. It looks nice, doesn’t it?”

  Dicey could have hugged her sister, who noticed things and took the trouble to say so. “Gram’s awake,” she reported, “but she doesn’t want anything.” Maybeth looked at the closed door. “She asked me to close it.”

  “She didn’t mean it,” Maybeth said.

  “It’s what she said, Maybeth.”

  “But when Gram’s sick—could you unpack these, Dicey?” Maybeth didn’t explain anything. She just knocked on the door of Gram’s room, and went in.

  Dicey put away the cans and dry foods, she washed fruit, set the week’s supply of butter in the freezer and the eggs in the refrigerator. She heard Maybeth’s voice, talking to Gram. Then Maybeth came back into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water. She picked up the cyclamen plant, with its windswept white flowers, and carried it into Gram’s room. When she came out again, she had the water glass in her hand—she washed it out, rinsed it, filled it with fresh water, and then dropped two thick ice cubes to clink around in it, sounding as cool and fresh as a June evening. Dicey watched her sister.

  Maybeth took the water into Gram’s room, then came back into the kitchen to cut a slice of bread and put it into the toaster. She poured boiling water into a mug and let the tea bag steep. Then she buttered the toast, cut the crusts off, spread it lightly with strawberry jam, and cut it into four triangles, which she arranged on a little plate. Dicey watched her sister do all these little things. Then she followed Maybeth into Gram’s bedroom. Maybeth had put the cyclamen plant on the bedside table and raised the shade so sunlight fell on it. The pillow behind Gram’s head had been plumped up, and the bedspread folded neatly down over the end of the bed, leaving the blanket across Gram’s chest. Gram’s hair had been brushed and she had changed her nightgown. While Dicey stood watching, Maybeth went to the bureau and took out a cardigan. “You should put this on, Gram,” Maybeth said.

  “I’m not cold,” Gram objected.

  “I know.” Maybeth held out one sleeve, to help Gram get her arm into it.

  “I said I wasn’t hungry,” Gram objected.

  “I know.” Maybeth moved the plate of toast over to where Gram could reach it easily.

  “Or thirsty, either,” Gram objected. “Don’t say it, don’t tell me—you know.”

  “That’s right,” Maybeth agreed, almost laughing.

  Gram didn’t look better, it wasn’t that—she just didn’t look as terrible as before.

  “We’re going to make some spaghetti sauce,” Maybeth said. “You aren’t going to have to eat it—but may I leave the door open? What if the smell has some nourishing value?”

  “You know it doesn’t,” Gram told Maybeth. Gram looked at Dicey, who stood in the door, seeing everything Maybeth had done. Gram shook her head, as if to ask for sympathy for what she had to put up with. For a second, Gram really looked at Dicey.

  Dicey went back into the kitchen, to start chopping up onions. If she were sick, she thought, she’d like to have Maybeth taking care of her. Dicey recognized the feeling she was feeling and knew its right name. Shame. She was ashamed of herself, for all the things she hadn’t done right; she figured she should have known how to notice them. It wasn’t only taking care of Gram—Maybeth was there to do that job, and do it right. It was everything that she had let go wrong, with her business mostly—from being robbed, to having to do Claude’s boats, to losing Mr. Hobart’s order. If she had started on his boat, he couldn’t have taken his money back. She’d originally planned to start on it, then she’d changed her plans. What made her the most ashamed was the way she’d worked about as hard as she could, and that hadn’t been good enough.

  Dicey thought she’d better scale down her dreams. She’d better get back to being practical. She’d better see if she could sell the larch to get some of her money back from it. She’d better aim a little lower, or she wouldn’t be able even to keep the shop.

  Maybeth came out of Gram’s room and got the spaghetti sauce ingredients out. Dicey started sautéing chopped onions in the big frying pan. Maybeth had wrapped an apron around her jeans, and was frowning as she worked the can opener around the can of tomato paste. “You’re really terrific, Maybeth,” Dicey said, and meant it.

  Maybeth shook her head. “I can cook, and I can sing. I’m pretty. But those aren’t things I do. They’re things I am. I failed the first semester of history, Dicey.”

  That didn’t have anything to do with it, Dicey thought. But Maybeth must think it did. Maybeth was like Gram, thinking that she wanted the door closed so she could hide out with her sickness in the dim light there, like some hunted animal going to ground in its burrow. “How badly did you fail it?” she asked.

  “I got a fifty-one.”

  “Then all you need is a sixty-nine or seventy to pass for the year. You can do that, Maybeth.”

  Maybeth shook her head. “The best grade I’ve ever gotten is a sixty-four, on a homework assignment. And my map work passes.”

  “What if I tried to help you learn?”

  “You can’t. You have the shop,” Maybeth explained.

  “I could still, if we planned the time. Would you let me try?” Dicey asked.

  “Of course. I’d like it, Dicey. But you don’t have to. I don’t mind.”

  “I know you don’t,” Dicey said. She wished she could learn from Maybeth how not to mind. Maybe if she tried, she’d be able to. But she did mind, and she didn’t know how not to.

  “It’s Sammy that I mind about,” Maybeth said. She stirred the chopped meat into the cooking onions. “Because he should go to tennis camp.”

  “We can’t possibly afford that.”

  “I know, and so does he. But he may be good enough for a scholarship and he can’t even try for it. Because they’ve never heard of him.”

  “Or seen him play,” Dicey pointed out. “I didn’t think tennis camp was weighing him down.”

  “It’s not that. I just wish—”

  “Me, too,” Dicey agreed.

  CHAPTER 17

  When the spaghetti sauce had been assembled and was cooking away with slow burping bubbles, thick and red like an edible volcano, Dicey and Maybeth sat down to Maybeth’s history assignment. The whole kitchen smelled of tomatoes, onion, and meat, of the oregano and basil Maybeth had brought down fresh from her window garden. Dicey went to look in on Gram while Maybeth went upstairs to find her history notebook. Gram still sat up, still sat quiet.

  “It smells as good as she promised,” Gram said, acknowledging Dicey’s presence.

  “Maybeth keeps promises.”

  “Oh, well, we all do. Whether we should or not,” Gram said. She didn’t say it as if it was important. She said it as if she was talking to herself.

  “We’re going to do some history,” Dicey told her grandmother, in case Gram was wondering, although she didn’t think Gram was even thinking about them. This time she didn’t ask. She checked the glass of water, to see that it was full enough, that it had cubes of ice still floating in it.

  “About time something got done about that history.”

  “Agreed,” Dicey said. “Hungry?” she asked.

  Gram’s head moved back and forth on the pillow. Dicey’s heart hurt her, to see Gram lying still in
her bed, so weak that it looked like an effort for her to slowly shake her head and say no. Generally, Gram’s noes came quick and sure, like gunshots, and her yesses, too. Dicey’s heart felt swollen with sadness. There wasn’t anything she could do except wait for Gram to get over this. But what if Cisco’s hint was correct, what if Gram wasn’t ever going to get better? Dicey turned away from the bedroom. She couldn’t look that possibility in the eye, and she knew it.

  Maybeth’s assignment was to make a time line of the Civil War, because, she explained, they were having a unit test on Friday. Maybeth opened her textbook to a chapter titled “The War Between the States.” The chapter was illustrated by a long, narrow picture, where men in blue uniforms faced men in gray uniforms, and puffs of gun smoke filled the air between them.

  Dicey looked at the papers spread out on the table, class notes, homework paragraphs (graded with angry red numbers, fifty-seven, fifty-three, forty-six, with angry red notes telling Maybeth to use facts to support her ideas, to organize, to improve her spelling), and a sheet of unlined paper with a thick black line across its waist, crowded with vertical lines to mark events. Everything on that time-line paper was so massed together, Dicey could barely find the names she knew she’d recognize, like Gettysburg and Bull Run. She always remembered Bull Run because they fought two battles there, and the result had been the same both times, thousands of men dead or injured, and a victory for the South. It wasn’t who won that bothered Dicey, but the thousands of dead or injured, whoever won.

  If they lived then, Dicey thought, Jeff would have been one of those young men. If you lived at the wrong time, then sometimes you didn’t get any chance at all to live. Like Bullet, the uncle they’d never even seen, their momma’s younger brother. Bullet lived at the wrong time and died in Vietnam.

  She wanted to see Jeff, to hear his guitar and his voice, just to be in the same room with him, or just to talk with him. She’d been forgetting about Jeff, but now—like the sun coming out after days and days of rain—he came back into her mind. She would call him, she decided. It was Saturday, he’d be in the dorm, she’d call him and talk for a long time with him. Everything was going wrong, going badly, but Jeff was something that was always right.