Tallahassee Higgins

by Mary Downing Hahn

  As I talked, I could see the whole movie unfolding before my eyes: The daughter would be played by a girl even prettier than Dawn, but the aunt would look like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, and everyone in the audience would feel sorry for the girl.

  "First you see how happy the mother is, laughing and swimming and having a wonderful time, hardly ever thinking about her daughter," I continued. "And then you see how miserable the daughter is. She has to sleep in a cold room, and she can't watch TV or go to McDonald's or even drink coffee, all because the aunt hates the girl's mother so much."

  "Get to the interesting part," Dawn interrupted, apparently not realizing that I was right in the middle of it. "Will your mother get to kiss Richard Gere?"

  She and Terri and Karen all giggled and stared at me. "Sure she will," I said. "It's an R movie, you know." I poked my spoon into my Jell-O and it quivered all over as if it were alive.

  By the time we went back to class, I had myself believing Liz was about to become the biggest star in America. While Mrs. Duffy droned on and on about U.S. history and other boring subjects, I daydreamed about my future in Hollywood. In my imagination Liz and I were walking along a beach. "I've missed you so much, Talley," Liz was saying as the Pacific Ocean washed gently over the sand and swirled around our ankles.

  Then Richard Gere came along and offered to give me a part in the movie, too. "Talley's a wonderful actress," Liz told him. "She has this amazing natural talent She might not be able to do fractions, but wait till you see her on the screen." Then she gave me a big hug, and I almost cried right there in school thinking about it.

  Chapter 7

  WHEN THE DISMISSAL BELL finally rang, I hurried out of the room. I didn't want Mrs. Duffy to catch me for a fraction lesson, and I didn't want to tell any more stories about Liz and her movie career.

  As I crossed the street, though, I heard somebody call me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Jane DeFlores, with her brothers at her heels, running to catch up with me. Although she hadn't sat with Dawn and her friends at the lunch table, I'd caught Jane staring at me several times.

  "Mind if I walk with you?" she asked. I nodded while the boys stared at me as if I had just dropped down from another planet.

  "My aunt says you live behind her and Uncle Dan," I said as we started up Oglethorpe Street.

  "That's right." Jane turned to her brothers. "This is Matthew, Mark, and Luke," she told me. "If my mother has one more boy—which I hope she doesn't—she'll name him John. You know, after the fourth apostle."

  The boys, who seemed to be about nine, eight, and seven years old, mumbled something, and Luke asked, "What are those brown things all over your face?"

  Jane started to poke him, but I was used to people kidding me about my freckles. "They're spots," I told him. "I'm a leopard girl." I snarled and lunged at him, flexing my fingers like claws.

  Luke backed away, but Matthew and Mark laughed. "They're freckles, dummy," Matthew said, and gave Luke a friendly little shove that sent him flying into a hedge.

  "They go with her orange hair," Mark added. Then, to my relief, the three of them ran on ahead, giving Jane and me a chance to talk.

  "Did you know that your mother and my mother used to know each other?" Jane asked.

  "Really?" Liz had never mentioned any of her old friends to me. In fact, whenever I asked her about Hyattsdale, she always said it was ancient history.

  "I heard my mother talking to your aunt on the phone before you came." Jane stopped on the corner. "Here's where I live. Would you like to come in and meet her?"

  Although Jane's house had tan shingles and Uncle Dan's had gray shingles, they were exactly alike on the outside. Inside, though, they were very different. Some of the walls had been knocked out in Jane's house, making the rooms bigger and brighter, and a family room had been added onto the back; it had a slanted ceiling with a skylight and sliding glass doors leading out to a deck. Everything looked new and modern, especially the kitchen.

  The boys had beaten us home. Matthew and Mark were playing a noisy video game, blowing up aliens and spaceships and shouting at each other. Luke was trying to get a Star Wars action figure away from a little girl—a sister, I guess—and a baby was crying in a playpen. It was like walking into a day-care center.

  When Mrs. DeFlores saw Jane and me, she looked up from the onion she was chopping. I expected her to spread her arms and embrace me, the daughter of her long-lost friend. But even after Jane told her who I was, she just stood there, staring at me.

  "So you're Tallahassee," she finally said. Looking at me hard from head to foot, she added, "You don't look a bit like your mother."

  "That's what everybody says." I watched her chop the onion into smaller and smaller pieces. "Liz says I take after my father."

  Mrs. DeFlores looked at me again and bit her lower lip. Without saying anything, she went on mincing the onion.

  "Jane says you and Liz were friends," I went on, still hoping to get a nice response from her.

  "We knew each other."

  "But you told me you played together all the time," Jane said. "You made the path through the hedge running back and forth."

  "That was ages ago, when we were kids." Finished with the onion, Mrs. DeFlores dumped it into a bowl with some ground beef and turned her attention to a green pepper.

  "Liz is on her way to California now," I said, taking a handful of cookies from the bag Jane held out.

  "To be a movie star," Jane added.

  "So your aunt told me." Mrs. DeFlores began mixing egg and bread crumbs into the stuff in the bowl. "Luke!" she yelled suddenly. "Leave Susan alone. If you hit her one more time, you'll be sorry!"

  "But she has my Darth Vader!" Luke shrieked. "And she won't give him to me!"

  "Give Luke his toy!" Mrs. DeFlores shouted. "Right this minute, young lady, or I start counting!"

  Susan burst into tears and threw Darth at Luke. Grabbing his toy, he joined Mark and Matthew in front of the video game, and Susan followed him, still whining about something.

  "As soon as Liz gets settled, I'm going out there, too." I raised my voice to get Mrs. DeFlores's attention. "I'll tell her I saw you."

  Mrs. DeFlores nodded and packed the meat loaf into a baking dish. "Jane, don't eat any more cookies. You'll ruin your appetite for dinner."

  As Jane started to lead me upstairs to her room, Mrs. DeFlores called after her, "Don't forget you have to set the table and do some other things for me in half an hour. You'd better not spend all your free time talking when I'm sure you've got homework to do."

  "How many brothers and sisters do you have, anyway?" I asked Jane as she slammed her door to keep Susan from following us into the bedroom.

  "Too many," Jane said. "Three brothers and two sisters."

  "Janie, Janie, let me in!" Susan banged on the door.

  "Go away, baby brat-face!" Jane opened the door a crack and yelled at Susan.

  "Let me in." Susan tried to wedge her body into the room, like a door-to-door salesman.

  "Mom!" Jane bellowed. "Make Susan leave us alone!"

  To my relief Mrs. DeFlores called Susan and threatened to count again if she didn't come at once.

  "Why'd you tell me our moms were friends?" I asked Jane as Susan stamped downstairs crying.

  "I thought they were."

  "Well, your mom sure didn't act like it." I went to the window and looked across the yard at the back of Uncle Dan's house. Frankly, I was very disappointed in Mrs. DeFlores but I didn't want to embarrass Jane by saying so. As soon as she'd told me her mother knew Liz, I was sure that Mrs. DeFlores would be crazy about me. Liz's friends always thought I was a scream.

  But, as far as I could see, Mrs. DeFlores didn't like me any better than Aunt Thelma did, and I couldn't imagine her being friends with Liz. For one thing, she seemed years older. And she didn't have any sense of humor. Jane must have misunderstood her mother, I thought. Maybe she had been friends with Aunt Thelma, not Liz.

  When Jane jo
ined me at the window, I pointed at Uncle Dan's house. "That's my bedroom window, right across from yours."

  "Once I read a book about some kids who fixed up a tin-can telephone between their rooms," Jane said. "Maybe you and I could do that."

  "Do you know how?"

  "No, but my dad is real good at stuff like that. I bet he could rig one up."

  While Jane and I were talking, I saw Aunt Thelma's car pull into the driveway. "I guess I better go." I picked up my jacket and started downstairs with Jane right behind me.

  "You can cut right through our backyard," she said, "through the hole in the hedge. Come on, I'll show you."

  "Where are you going, Jane?" Mrs. DeFlores asked. "It's time to set the table."

  "I'll be right back." Jane dashed out the door before her mother could say anything else. "Want to walk to school with me tomorrow?" she asked as we paused by the hedge.

  "Sure." I felt like laughing and jumping around and acting crazy; maybe Mrs. DeFlores didn't like me, but Jane did.

  I watched her run back to her house, her long, straight hair flying out behind her. Then, pushing my way through the gap in the hedge, I blundered through the remains of a vegetable garden and hurried up the porch steps.

  When I got inside, I saw Aunt Thelma standing in the hallway sorting the mail. "Where have you been?" she asked. "I expected you to be here when I got home."

  "I was over at Jane's." I grabbed at the mail. "Is there a postcard for me?"

  "It's a little early to expect one," Aunt Thelma said as I pawed through the fliers addressed to Occupant. "By the end of the week you should hear from your mother."

  "It'll be sooner than that," I said confidently. "She promised she'd write every day."

  Aunt Thelma went into the kitchen and got some things out of the refrigerator. "Here, Tallahassee, pare these for me." Handing me six potatoes, she began trimming the fat from a piece of meat while Fritzi snuffled around her feet, hoping she might drop something, I suppose.

  "Was Liz ever friends with Mrs. DeFlores?" I asked Aunt Thelma.

  "They knew each other." Aunt Thelma glanced at me. "Why?"

  "Jane told me they were friends." I concentrated on scraping the eye out of a potato. "But Mrs. DeFlores acted like she didn't even want me in the house. Jane noticed, too, so I wasn't just imagining it."

  "Oh, don't be silly, Tallahassee. Linda's very nice." Aunt Thelma put the meat into a frying pan without looking at me.

  "Is that Mrs. DeFlores's name—Linda?"

  Aunt Thelma nodded. "But she's Mrs. DeFlores to you."

  "I always called Liz's friends by their first names."

  "Maybe that's how they do it in Florida. Here that would be disrespectful."

  "But were they friends?" I persisted. "She seems so much older than Liz, more your age."

  Aunt Thelma glanced at me. "Not every thirty-year-old woman wants to look like a teenager."

  I knew she was wrong about that, but instead of correcting her, I asked her if Liz and Mrs. DeFlores had had a fight or something.

  "I told you, Tallahassee, I don't remember." Aunt Thelma turned away to fill a pot with water and set it on the stove. "Cut the potatoes in quarters and drop them in as soon as the water boils."

  "But you must remember." I began hacking the potatoes. "It wasn't that long ago."

  "Will you drop the subject, Tallahassee?" Aunt Thelma picked up a spoon and began stirring the meat in the frying pan, a frown sharpening the lines around her mouth. "Whatever happened between your mother and Linda DeFlores is their business, not yours."

  Dumping the potatoes into the boiling water, I flounced out of the kitchen, getting the usual snarl from Fritzi. "You have bad breath," I whispered to him. "And you smell bad all over."

  Chapter 8

  JANE AND I WALKED to school together every morning for the rest of the week. And every afternoon we walked home together. After I checked the mail, we usually went to Jane's house because Mrs. DeFlores wouldn't allow her to play at Uncle Dan's house unless Aunt Thelma was home.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. DeFlores didn't act any friendlier. If she had been in a bad mood the first time I met her, I guess she never got out of it. At least not when I was around.

  Sometimes Jane would try to get her mother to be nice. She would say things like, "Doesn't Tallahassee have more freckles than anybody you ever saw?" and Mrs. DeFlores would ask Jane when she was going to do her homework. Or Jane would hold up one of the pictures I'd drawn in art and say, "See what a wonderful artist Tallahassee is," and Mrs. DeFlores would say, "You're a very good artist yourself, Jane."

  Finally Jane gave up and we would go straight to her room, avoiding Susan, and play Clue or Monopoly. If I forgot about the time, though, Mrs. DeFlores would shout up the steps, "Tallahassee, your aunt is home." That was her way of telling me to leave.

  When I'd been in Hyattsdale for two weeks without a word from Liz, I started getting desperate. Where was she? Suppose she'd had an accident? Bob had taken me for a ride on his motorcycle once, and I hadn't been very impressed with his driving skills. For all I knew, Liz was lying dead in the desert or something.

  Of course Aunt Thelma thought I was being silly. "The mail is slow, Tallahassee," she would say. "It takes a long time for a letter to get here from out west."

  Uncle Dan was much more sympathetic. He gave me a big road map and helped me figure out which route Liz had probably taken. I cut out a little motorcycle I'd drawn with two people on it, making sure to include their helmets, and entertained myself by moving it along the red interstate highway lines.

  "Oh, Bob," I would make Liz say, "When are we going to pass a post office? Poor Talley, I have all these postcards for her and I haven't got any stamps."

  And the mother stealer would say, "Sorry, Liz. No time to stop now. We have to keep going till we get to Hollywood."

  Vroom, vroom, vra vra vra-voooom! Away the motorcycle would go with Liz clinging to Bob and crying, "Please let me get some stamps, please, Bob, please!"

  At night I talked to Melanie, and she always made me feel better. "Don't worry," she would say in her squeaky, little voice, "Liz will send you the ticket soon. Then you'll never have to see Aunt Thelma again."

  ***

  One night, while we were sitting at the dinner table, Aunt Thelma gave me a hard time about moping. She said I should try thinking about somebody besides myself.

  "After all," she said, "you have a roof over your head and three meals a day. That's more than some children have." Pointing her fork at my plate, she added, "Eat your spaghetti. You need to put some meat on those bones. Do you want to stay little and skinny all your life?"

  I poked at the mess on my plate, trying to eat the meat sauce without touching the noodles. "I don't like spaghetti," I said.

  Aunt Thelma frowned, but the phone rang before she could really get going on her favorite topic, the importance of cleaning your plate. "It's probably a salesman," she said as she went to the kitchen to answer it. "They always call at the most inconvenient times."

  As I rearranged my spaghetti, I heard Aunt Thelma say, "Well, it's about time you called. Somebody has been very worried about you."

  Leaping from my chair, I ran to the kitchen as Aunt Thelma said, "Yes, you can speak to her, but I want to talk to you before you hang up."

  My heart was pumping so hard I thought I might die of cardiac arrest. "Liz, Liz!" I yelled into the phone.

  "Talley, honey, how are you?" Liz sounded like she was calling from across the street.

  "I'm fine, but why haven't you written to me? You promised you'd write every day!" I shouted.

  "I'm sorry, Talley, but you know me. I kept meaning to write and then forgetting."

  "Are you sending the ticket soon?"

  "Oh, honey, things haven't worked out quite as well as Bob and I hoped they would. We don't even have a decent place to stay yet, just a room in a motel, sweetie."

  She paused, probably to light a cigarette. "Bob found a job in some
pokey little photography shop, and I'm waiting tables in the Big Carrot, but we're looking every day for something better so we can get you out here. We miss you so much, Talley, we really do, but we can't have you come right now."

  "But what about the movies, Liz? What about those people Bob knows, the ones who were going to get you started?" I bit my lip and tried not to cry. What was she doing working in a restaurant? She didn't have to go all the way to California to be a waitress.

  "It takes time, honey, to get into films, but I'm working on it. And Bob's friends are sure I'll make it. All I need is the right break."

  "But can't I come out there now?" I clutched the phone and whispered into it. "I can't stand it here, Liz. Aunt Thelma hates me. She won't let me do anything. I can't even stay up late and watch TV." I snuffled hard and tried to keep my voice low, but I knew it was rising up to a real mosquito whine.

  "I don't care if it's just a motel, Liz," I babbled. "I'll sleep on the floor and I won't be any trouble at all. You won't even know I'm there. Just send me the ticket, please, Liz, please!"

  "Tallahassee, will you calm down?" Liz sounded cross. "I can't handle all this emotion right now. I told you I can't have you with me yet, and you're just going to have to accept that."

  "I don't think you even miss me!" I was angry now. "I'll bet you never think about me at all!" I yelled. "You probably go surfing and swimming and lie around on the beach all day while I freeze in Maryland. More than likely I'll come down with pneumonia and die and you won't even get here for my funeral!"

  "Don't be silly, Talley! You're just a child and you have no idea what it's like to be an adult and have to earn a living and worry all the time about important things like buying food and paying the rent, which isn't cheap even in this crummy place. It isn't like I left you with strangers or something. You're with your uncle in the house I grew up in."

  "You hated it here, and so do I! If you don't come get me soon, I'll do just what you did—I'll run away!"