Underdog

by Marilyn Sachs

  I told him. “Sandy said—you know—Sandy, my first stepmother. The one with the candles. She thought maybe it had to do with—well—both of you are lawyers and you make a lot of money and maybe you didn’t approve of all the causes that he was always involved in and that he never made much money on.”

  “Oh no,” my uncle said. “It wasn’t that.”

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t want my uncle to think I took my father’s side. My father was dead and if my uncle didn’t let me stay with him, I knew that would be the end of the line for me. My mother had been an only child and both sets of grandparents were dead.

  “Your father and I quarreled a great deal,” my uncle said in his slow, grave voice. “I can’t deny that we did, Izzy. We quarreled as boys and as men but the one thing we never quarreled over was our differences as lawyers. I was always—am now—proud of what he stood for. Izzy, your father was a brave fighter for human rights,”

  “I know,” I told him. “He was for the underdog.”

  I don’t think he heard me. His face creased up in solemn wrinkles. “No, it wasn’t what you think at all. This last, worst quarrel had to do with ...” He looked right at me and shook his head. “Izzy, it had to do with your mother’s death.”

  “It’s okay,” I tried to reassure him. I didn’t know much about my mother’s death. Only that it had happened when I was four and that she had fallen and broken her neck in a freak accident. But she was dead too and I didn’t want my uncle to think I was on her side either.

  “Your father—I don’t know what he ever said to you about that.”

  “Not much,” I told him. “He never talked about my mother. Sometimes he talked about Sandy and sometimes he talked about Karen but he never said anything about my mother.”

  “Did he ... did he ever say anything about me?” My uncle leaned toward me and watched my face. He wanted me to say something and I wanted to say it. But I wasn’t sure what it was. I couldn’t remember my father ever saying anything about my uncle.

  “Nothing bad,” I told him. “He never said anything bad about you.”

  “Oh!” My uncle straightened up. “Well, Izzy, maybe one day if you’re interested we could talk about it.” He began mumbling how he supposed since I was only eleven we could wait a few years.

  “No hurry,” I assured him.

  Then he said how my Aunt Alice, that’s his wife, was anxious to see me again. How she really wanted to come to Washington for the memorial service but how somebody got sick in the art gallery where she works and they couldn’t find a replacement.

  “That’s okay,” I told him.

  Aunt Alice opened the door when we arrived at their condominium. I’m still not sure what a condominium is but they had a great big one with lots of rooms and views of the city from every window you looked out of. All the furniture and rugs were white or off-white and each room had big ugly paintings hanging on the walls and big ugly statues standing on the floor that made you want to say yuk. The best part was outside the windows where you could look at the tops of houses, the ships sailing on the bay, and the big bridge with the little cars going back and forth.

  I didn’t say yuk. I smiled at Aunt Alice and when she bent down to kiss me I smelled an unfamiliar perfume in her hair and I had to hold on hard to my smile to keep from crying.

  “We’re so happy to have you here, Isabelle,” said my aunt.

  “Izzy,” my uncle corrected. “They all call her Izzy.”

  “Izzy, dear,” said my aunt, “we’re so happy to have you here.”

  “I’m happy to be here,” I told her.

  My aunt matched the apartment. All her clothes seemed to be white or off-white and her face was pale and her hair was frosted.

  We all stood there smiling at each other for a while and then she said she supposed I’d like to see the room I’d be sleeping in. She didn’t say it was my room but I said yes, I would like to see it. Then we all trooped off to a room that had a bed with a white bedspread on it and some even uglier paintings on the wall.

  “This is our guest room,” Aunt Alice told me.

  “Oh, it’s very nice,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  “I thought you’d like it,” she said. “That painting facing the bed with the lovely azures and gentians always makes me want to cry.”

  It made me want to cry too. I didn’t know what azures and gentians meant but the thought of waking up every morning and facing that wall full of big blue spots and splashes like pigeon droppings made me want to scream.

  “And come over here to the window, Izzy,” said my uncle. “I think the view from this window is the best in the whole place. Look over there. That’s Market Street and there’s the Ferry Building. Later when it gets dark you’ll have thousands of lights twinkling up at you.”

  I murmured something and kept smiling but all I wanted was for them to leave me alone so I could cry. I hadn’t had a chance, I’d been so busy worrying in the past few weeks. I needed to cry now and I needed to be alone.

  “So, Izzy,” said my aunt, “why don’t you wash up? You have your own bathroom right there across the room. I fixed an early dinner because I assumed your stomach would still be on Eastern time.”

  “Oh, I’m not hungry,” I told her. “We had a big lunch on the plane and I never eat much anyway.”

  “Well, whatever you like,” said my aunt, and she and my uncle walked out of the room. They didn’t close the door after them. I wanted to close the door but I also didn’t want them to think I was sneaky or secretive so I left it open and made a dash for the bathroom where I could close the door. Naturally it was tiled all in white and I fell down on the white floor and cried. I threw a few towels around too. They were pale pink which should have made me feel better but it didn’t. Then I threw up the lunch I had eaten on the plane. After that, I picked up the towels, washed my face, splashed a lot of water on my eyes, combed my hair, stretched my mouth into a smile, and joined my aunt and uncle in the dining room.

  They were talking in whispers as I came into the room but as soon as they saw me they raised their voices and began smiling.

  “You know, Izzy, I think you look just like your father,” said my aunt.

  “That’s exactly what I think too,” said my uncle, “but— uh—somebody I said that to ...”

  “Sandy,” I told him.

  “Yes, that’s right. Sandy said she thought Izzy looked more like me.”

  “Oh no,” said my aunt. “Her face is longer, like Mark’s, and she’s darker than you are.”

  I agreed, and soon we were sitting down to dinner around the fanciest table I’d ever seen in my life. In the center stood one perfect flower surrounded by two long, skinny, translucent candles—nothing like Sandy’s—in two spiky silver candlesticks. All the plates naturally were white but the food was arranged so beautifully on each one I could hardly believe you were supposed to eat it.

  “Go ahead, Izzy,” said my aunt. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  And suddenly I was. Not only because I wanted to please her but because I really was hungry and the food tasted so wonderful, I ate and smiled and ate and smiled until suddenly my aunt started talking about schools.

  “... boarding schools,” she was saying.

  I stopped eating.

  “. , . not now, of course,” she said. “It’s too late this year but in the fall. We’ll have lots of time over the summer, Izzy, to look over the catalogs and maybe visit a few. We don’t want you to be too far away, after all. We want to come and see you and you’ll want to spend some of your holidays with us ...”

  So it wasn’t going to be my room after all. Aunt Alice had made a chocolate mousse for dessert but I couldn’t eat any.

  Chapter 3

  Well, I told myself the next morning when I woke up and saw the painting of blue pigeon droppings on the opposite wall, at least I won’t have to see that every morning if I’m not living here.


  In a way, I felt relieved but not happy. It was the end of the line. I couldn’t go any further so that was a relief. But it wasn’t good knowing that nobody wanted me and that I had to go to boarding school.

  Cheer up, I told myself after I had washed up and stood looking around the (not my) room. Keep busy. Don’t mope or they might get rid of you even sooner. This is only the middle of April so you do have at least four months before they ship you off. It’s even possible if you make a good impression that they might change their minds.

  I opened the door of my room and listened. No sounds out there. It was Sunday morning. I was used to my father’s early hours and the clock in my room said 8:15. Some people, I supposed, slept late on Sunday morning. Gently, I closed the door and decided to remain in my room until I heard wake-up noises from outside.

  My two suitcases stood in the middle of the room. I guessed it would be okay to unpack. Last night, Aunt Alice had said I should and that, for the time being, I could hang my clothes in the big closet in the room and use the double chests for anything that folded. I didn’t need all that space. My underwear, sweaters, and socks fitted into one of the chests with lots of room to spare and when I finished hanging up the rest of my clothes, a whole long row of empty hangers still remained. The closet was one of those interesting ones with shelves and hooks and bars if I could only figure out what they were meant for. I laid my pair of tennis shoes and my boots on a slanting wire stand on the closet floor and hoped it was intended for shoes. I decided to put my books on the shelves. One of them had a big box sitting on it.

  Aunt Alice knocked on my door and waited until I said “Come in” before she opened it.

  “Oh, my,” she said, “you really are an early bird. Do you always get up early on weekends or are you just still on Eastern time?”

  “I guess I’m used to getting up early,” I said. “But I can be very quiet.”

  She was wearing a shimmering white bathrobe and her hair looked combed. “We’re kind of lazy,” she explained, “over the weekends. Especially on Sundays. Roger—your Uncle Roger—likes to loaf and just read the paper.”

  “I can stay in this room,” I said. “I don’t want to bother you.”

  Aunt Alice shook her head. “No, Izzy, I don’t want you to feel that way ... I ...” She didn’t finish what she was going to say. Instead she walked over to the closet and looked inside.

  “Is this everything?” she asked.

  “I put all the rest in the chest and my shoes are on that rack. That’s meant for shoes, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes,” my aunt said, looking at my two pairs of shoes. “Don’t you have any more shoes than these?”

  “I left a few pairs back in Washington. These are all I need except for my zoris.”

  “Well, we’ll go shopping tomorrow. I’ll take the day off and we can have lunch. Would you like that, Izzy?”

  “Sure,” I said, a big smile on my face. “I’d like that.”

  “Well, is there anything else you need now?” she asked me.

  “I was thinking I’d put my books on one of the shelves,” I told her. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course it is. Here, let me take away this big box of pictures.”

  “Are they family pictures?” I asked her.

  “Uh-huh.” She was carrying them out of the room but she stopped. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “Sure.”

  “I’ll bring them into the living room. It might be fun for all of us to look at them. I know you and your parents are in some of the old ones. Finish your unpacking, Izzy, and I’ll make breakfast and then we can look at the photos. Oh—and what do you generally eat for breakfast, by the way?”

  “Anything is fine,” I told her.

  “But what do you like?”

  “I eat everything.”

  She shook her head. “How about some eggs?”

  “Well, if you and Uncle Roger eat eggs ...”

  “Izzy, I’m asking you if you like eggs. Never mind what we like,” she said kind of quickly. Then she took a breath, smiled, and said much more slowly, “We generally have a croissant or an English muffin but if you like eggs, Izzy, I’ll be happy to make some.”

  “I like croissants and English muffins,” I told her,

  “Orange juice? Milk?”

  “Well sure if you have them.”

  She walked out of the room and I finished putting all my things away. I put Sandy’s two candles on the chest right below the pigeon-dropping painting but they didn’t look right there so I stuck them on one of the shelves in the closet. I put my two suitcases into the closet and after I’d made the bed, the room looked just the way it had before I arrived.

  My uncle was sitting on the couch, still in his bathrobe, with the Sunday paper in front of him. My father always got dressed in the mornings which is why I always got dressed too. But if my aunt and uncle sat around in their bathrobes on the weekends I supposed I’d better learn to do the same.

  “Good morning, Izzy,” my uncle said, looking up.

  “Good morning, Uncle Roger.”

  Both of us smiled and waited.

  “How did you sleep?” my uncle asked.

  “Oh, just fine.”

  “Was the bed comfortable?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Do you have everything you need?”

  “Oh yes.”

  We continued smiling and I could see he was thinking of what to say next. So was I. Luckily, Aunt Alice came into the room then to say that breakfast was ready.

  We ate in the kitchen, a white-and-black-tiled room with a glass table and white metal chairs. It was tough going. They asked me a lot of questions and I tried to answer the way I thought they would want me to answer.

  “Do you have a lot of friends in Washington?” my aunt asked.

  “Oh no,” I told her, “I hardly ever brought friends over to my house. Mrs. Evans always said I was the quietest child she knew and the least messy.”

  “But didn’t you have any friends at all?” They both were looking at me, not even chewing their croissants or sipping their coffee. I guess that hadn’t been the right answer so I said cheerfully, “Oh, I had friends in school but I never brought them home. Sometimes Linda Altman—she lived downstairs—sometimes she came upstairs and we watched TV together. But we never made a mess.”

  I didn’t ask them any questions at breakfast because I knew that most grown-ups don’t like kids to ask questions. But later, when Aunt Alice and I were sitting around the table looking at pictures, I did ask questions like “Who was that?” and “How old were you when this was taken?”

  There were lots of pictures and she seemed to enjoy looking at them as much as I did. I always liked looking at photographs. We didn’t have very many at home. My father never took pictures and the ones I took weren’t always clear.

  Photographs made me happy. Seeing people in bathing suits on the beach or standing, all dressed up, in front of some famous building on a trip, I liked to make believe I was there too, making donkey fingers behind some kid’s head or singing in a chorus with a whole bunch of girls all dressed in white dresses.

  “Is that you?” I asked Aunt Alice, picking one out from about thirty faces.

  “No, no, Izzy, I’m over here. The little fat one. Would you believe I could have been such a blimp?” She pushed the picture away and picked up another. “Here, Izzy, look at this one. Here’s your father and your Uncle Roger.”

  Two boys, leaning against each other and grinning at the camera. The smaller one, my father, in a striped tee shirt and shorts. He had a bandaid on one knee and a bunch of teeth missing in his mouth. My father—a little boy just grinning at the camera.

  “Who took it?” I asked.

  “What? Oh—the picture? Roger,” my aunt called. “Who took this picture of you and Mark?”

  “Hmm?” My uncle tore himself away from his newspaper and came over to the table and picked up the picture. He smiled and
shook his head over it. “My father took it, Izzy. Your grandfather.”

  He laughed. “We were supposed to go and visit my Aunt Margaret—my father’s sister—your great aunt, Izzy, and my mother said we had to change our clothes but I guess my father must have liked the way we looked because he took the picture.” Uncle Roger laughed a little, soft laugh. Then he looked at me. “Do you remember him, Izzy? He was still alive before you left?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  He seemed disappointed. “He was so happy when you were born. I remember he waited at the hospital with Mark and he took lots and lots of pictures of you when you were little.”

  “Where are they?” I asked, really excited. “Where are my pictures?”

  Some of them were in the box. Pictures of me as a baby by myself, with my Uncle Roger and Aunt Alice, with my father and mother. There was a big one of just me and my mother—me, a tiny baby, and my mother with a big smile on her face. A pretty face. I didn’t look anything like her.

  “She was so pretty,” my Aunt Alice murmured, “and she had such a happy laugh. Do you remember her, Izzy?”

  “No,” I said, looking hard at the picture.

  My aunt let out her breath the way grown-ups do when they’re thinking of something sad. “She was so proud of you. She spent a lot of money on all sorts of little dresses and your father—well, they were just starting out and he used to make believe he didn’t approve but he was really just as bad. They were like two kids with a doll. Here, look at this one, Izzy. Here they both are with you.”

  Another photograph with both of them sitting on a couch and me, a little older, on my father’s lap, laughing and reaching out like I wanted to grab the camera. My father was holding me and he wasn’t looking at the camera. He was smiling at me and looking at me. Just at me. I didn’t feel good when I saw his smile and I put the picture down and took some others out of the box.

  “You don’t remember your mother at all?” my uncle asked.

  “No,” I told him. “Who’s this, Uncle Roger?”