On the Blue Comet

by Rosemary Wells

  “What’s at Schrafft’s?” I asked.

  “Chicken salad sandwiches for my granny and her pals who shop and have lunch. And the best ice cream in New York,” said Claire. “Sit at the counter and order a chocolate malted. And dawdle, Oscar. Take half an hour to drink it up. When you’re finished, walk around the block and keep your eyes peeled for police hanging around. If the cops have left, go back to Bruno, the doorman. Make sure there’s no policemen hanging around the lobby. Bruno should have a reply letter for you from Mummy and Daddy. Grab it. Make sure you’re not followed. Then come back the way you came.”

  “Can I read what’s in your letter first?” I asked.

  “Of course!” said Claire.

  The envelope was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Bister.

  The letter had been written on Claire’s own station­ery. The words were block letters in red pen, straight and crisp as if lettered with a ruler.

  DEAR MUMMY AND DADDY,

  I HAVE NOT BEEN KIDNAPPED. I AM NEARBY IN THE CITY. I WILL RETURN HOME SAFE AND SOUND IF YOU WILL SIGN THE AGREEMENT BELOW. PLEASE TELL ALL THE POLICE TO GO HOME. I AM FINE. PLEASE GIVE THE SIGNED AGREEMENT IN AN ENVELOPE TO BRUNO, THE DOORMAN, RIGHT AWAY. SOMEONE WILL COLLECT IT. IF THERE ARE NO POLICE AROUND AND NO ONE FOLLOWS THAT PERSON, I WILL APPEAR SOMETIME SOON AFTER THAT.

  LOVE, YR. DAUGHTER

  CLAIRE S. BISTER

  I AGREE AND SOLEMNLY PROMISE, SO HELP ME GOD, THAT CLAIRE, OUR DAUGHTER, WILL

  A. NOT EVER BE SENT TO BOARDING SCHOOL OR HAVE A COMING OUT PARTY.

  B. BE GIVEN NO MORE DOLLS AND SISSY CLOTHES AND BALLROOM DANCING LESSONS.

  C. BE GIVEN THE ELECTRIC TRAIN OF HER CHOICE PLUS TRACK AND LAYOUT.

  SIGNED:

  EVELYN COMSTOCK BISTER _____

  ROBERT WHITNEY BISTER _____

  DATED ____ WITNESSED BY ____

  SHOULD THIS AGREEMENT BE BREACHED OR IN ANY WAY COMPROMISED, BE IT UNDERSTOOD BY ALL PARTIES THAT CLAIRE S. BISTER WILL SHORTLY THEREAFTER VANISH IN THE EXACT WAY SHE DID ON CHRISTMAS MORNING.

  Claire gave me an old set of her brother’s clothing, and I put them on. They fit better than the Bullock’s clothes, which now hung on my peewee frame. I crept into the hallway and down the stairs. Every step felt like a kick from a mule.

  There were three policemen, lollygagging around in the lobby. Claire was right about them not noticing me any more than they might have seen a fly buzzing by. I dropped her letter in a large wicker mail basket that stood in the middle of the mail room. The building was so swank that even the lobby smelled of melted butter and lilies.

  Unseen, I glided out of the building, almost whistling, past Bruno, who was chatting with the police about the Dodgers’ chances in the coming baseball season. No one even looked up. I strolled two doors down and saw the big red and white sign, SCHRAFFT’S. I had never been to a restaurant and ordered by myself, even when I was eleven. Would they laugh at me or throw me out? I sat at the counter. It was not too different from the counter in Mr. Kinoshura’s drugstore, where Dad and I used to go for sodas together, except my feet didn’t touch the footrest on the stool. Brave as I could sound, I ordered a chocolate malted.

  “You’re awfully young to be ordering in a restau­rant, honey,” said the waitress a little doubtfully.

  Would she call the police and turn me in somewhere? My forehead began to sweat at the thought. “My mother’s coming to meet me,” I explained. “She’s just doing some shopping and then she’s coming right along.”

  The waitress brought my soda and set it down on a paper doily in front of me. “There you are! Now, sip it slowly,” she chirruped. Then she took my napkin and tucked it in under my chin for me.

  “May I ask the time, ma’am?” I said politely.

  “Of course!” said the waitress. She took off her wristwatch so I could see it. “Now, that’s the big hand and that’s the little hand. Do you know what the big hand and the little hand say?”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” I said.

  “Can you count yet?” she asked with a smile. “Can you tell time?”

  “Count? I can do long division and fractions,” I answered.

  “But you can’t be more than five years old,” she said.

  “Don’t call attention to yourself, Oscar!” Claire’s warning came flooding back.

  I put my twenty cents on the counter, hoping to distract the waitress. She brought me five cents in change. “One, two, three, four, five pennies!” she said merrily.

  “Keep the change, ma’am,” I mumbled.

  But the waitress looked at me even more curiously than before and slyly checked the door to see if my mother was coming in for me.

  Happily for me, church bells down the block tolled the half hour. Outside, on Park Avenue, two police car sirens went off. The patrol cars sped past Schrafft’s big front window on their way downtown. Their sirens faded in the noise of the traffic outside. I squirmed off my counter seat and sidled out the door before the waitress could ask me any more questions about my mother.

  I ambled casually past the entrance of Claire’s building. No cops in sight. I checked across the street, peering into corner phone booths and parked cars. No cops. I cleared the whole of the block and then moseyed into the lobby of the building. There were no cops anywhere, allowing me to trot right up to Bruno. “Letter for Miss Claire Bister, please,” I said.

  Bruno seemed to go into shock. “But you’re only a —”

  I snatched the letter out of his hand and scooted back out through the revolving glass door before he could say anything more. Then I disappeared into the side entrance, where the servants’ stairway let out. No one had followed me. I bolted up the steps as fast as my aching ribs would let me.

  I collapsed onto the bed. “I’m not moving again today,” I groaned.

  Claire opened the letter. “Aha!” she said. “I knew they’d sign! I won! They agreed to everything! Oscar, I’m going downstairs now. If you want to hear what happens, go to the laundry chute outside in the hall, open it up, and listen!”

  I heard very little except the echo of the laundry chute itself for a few minutes. Suddenly a woman’s voice shrieked. Claire’s mother, no question about it. A man’s deep baritone, her father, started hallooing and hooting and slapping something that sounded like leather. They all started singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow!” There was great happiness on Claire’s arrival, that was certain. Claire’s family might be a little slow on the uptake about their daughter, but they didn’t sound like totally bad parents to me.

  “Where were you, darling?” asked her mother over and over again when the dust had settled.

  “Out and about!” said Claire. “Here and there!”

  “Were you abducted?” asked her father sternly. “Were you kidnapped?”

  “No,” said Claire. “I never actually left the apartment.”

  Her mother managed a laugh like bells tinkling. “Darling,” she said, “you can have any Christmas present you want, and we’ll never send you to boarding school. You can go right here in town to Brearley School! Or The Spence School! Any school you want!”

  Mrs. Bister’s trilling voice sounded eerily like Mrs. Pettishanks. It was an accent. Actors and actresses used that English-y accent in the movies, too.

  “I want to go to plain old public school,” said Claire. “P.S. 6. It’s perfectly good.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Bister met this request with silence. I reckoned they would never spring for public school, but they would also not argue about it now. And they wouldn’t talk about the coming-out party either, since it was seven years off. They’d hope Claire would change. I knew she wouldn’t.

  Someone brought food in to Claire. I could hear the clink of silver and glassware.

  “After lunch,” Claire said, “I’d like to go over to FAO Schwarz if it’s okay with you.”

  “Anything you want, darling,” her father chimed in. “We’ll go together! Name it. You can have three train sets! Ju
st don’t disappear on us again.”

  “Thank God the police are gone, dear,” said Claire’s mother clearly to Claire’s father. “Their uniforms smelled like donkeys! We should write the police department and tell them to provide showers for their officers and send those uniforms to the dry cleaners.”

  “You sound like a socialist, dear!” teased Mr. Bister good-naturedly.

  What was a socialist? I think I remembered that Aunt Carmen had used the word to describe darkly clad people who didn’t go to church and met in basements to overthrow the government.

  As the Bisters’ lunch progressed, I lost interest in their chatter and went back to bed. I fell back against my pillows gratefully. I was happy for Claire. She was going to get her train at last. But my heart was as cold as a stone inside me. How would I ever get back to Cairo? Would I ever see my dad again and hear his gravelly, comforting laugh? Would I ever cook him dinner again or watch him light up one of his cigars? I drew the pillow over my head and said ten Hail Marys for deliverance, but if anyone in heaven heard them, they were lost in the shuffle.

  It was then that the telephone downstairs began to ring.

  It rang and rang and no one answered. Did that mean the house was empty? Wouldn’t a stray servant answer it? It was New Year’s Eve afternoon. Claire said the servants had the day off.

  Twelve unanswered rings. A sneaky voice inside me nibbled like a mouse. It whispered, “Oscar, how about calling your dad on the Bisters’ telephone! It’s New Year’s Eve, and he’s prob­ably home.” I stopped myself. Don’t trouble trouble, Oscar! I warned myself. But I didn’t listen. Our Cairo telephone number was stitched into my heart.

  My ribs, too, screamed at me to stay put. Nonetheless I got up and crept into the hallway. Not a sound greeted me. The entrance through the servants’ quarters to the apartment down below was in front of me. I went through the doorway.

  Better not risk it, I argued with myself as I slid snakelike, one bare foot after another, down the stairs to the main rooms of the Bisters’ apartment.

  Like fingers, my toes grasped the carpet beneath. I could have heard a feather flutter to the floor, the house was so quiet. Supposing I ran into Claire’s brother? Was he hanging around somewhere? I didn’t want to think about him.

  Careful, Oscar. Still plenty of time to turn around and go back to bed! Go back where it’s safe! Do it now! I instructed myself in an inner yell. But again I did not listen to a word I said. The possibility of my dad’s “Hello!” along the telephone wires was too great a pull.

  I found myself on the bedroom level. Oil paintings in heavy gilt frames lined the walls. One of those oriental runners caressed my feet, its red and blue silk patterns comforting to my little boy’s toes. To my right was the Bisters’ master bedroom. Next to their four-poster lay a polar bear rug with the bear’s head, teeth bared, still intact. I shuddered, picturing the poor bear, its life ended cruelly — not to mention having its beautiful thick pelt walked on by Mrs. Bister’s dainty feet morning and night. I looked on the bedside table. No telephone in sight. Where would these people have their telephone? Probably just like the Pettishankses, and other rich River Heights families, the Bisters had a telephone room.

  Where would the Bisters’ telephone room be? On the ground floor, of course. Even more dangerous. I inched down the next set of stairs.

  The parlor, if that’s what the Bisters called it, was as big as the entire floor of our house on Lucifer Street. It looked out over a snow-covered park two blocks away. Bulky wing chairs, embroidered with silk dragon­flies, guarded either side of the marble fireplace. The hearth was immaculate and laid with small logs, stacked with military precision. I was tempted to jump on a creamy velvet sofa, but kept walking. No telephone here. I reckoned the sofa alone could fit five people. Count in the beefy leather easy chairs, and the room could hold two dozen comfortably, without bringing in wooden folding chairs from the garage, like my dad always did when Thanksgiving was at our house.

  They don’t have wooden folding chairs. They don’t have a garage! I reminded myself. One of the Bisters’ overstuffed ottomans could no doubt pay for all our Sears Roebuck furniture back in Cairo.

  Go back, Oscar! the inner voice urged me. Just one minute to hear Dad say hello. That’s all I want, I bargained with that unreasonable other Oscar.

  A pair of French doors at the end of the parlor opened into the dining room. A dozen ladder-back chairs with gold inlay at the joints were precisely spaced around a mahogany table, its surface polished like a mirror. Overhead hung a chandelier with a hundred glass dangles on it.

  Thankfully, the room to the side of this one was indeed the Bisters’ telephone room. It was decorated in the Spanish style. Heavy wine-colored draperies hung over the windows. Gold-thread dragonflies were embroidered into the velvet. I turned the lamp on. The light blazed through spangled colored panes, each no bigger than my thumbnail. Another dragon­fly design — the Bisters must have liked dragonflies. Overlooking the telephone itself was an ivory statuette of a Greek god holding a snake-entwined staff. He had silver wings coming out of his heels.

  “Mercury, Oscar!” I could almost hear Mrs. Olderby’s voice reminding me. When Mrs. Olderby taught us ancient history, she made sure we memorized the names and characteristics of every god in Greek, Roman, and Egyp­tian heaven.

  Glued in a tiny window on the front of the phone was the Bisters’ number, BUtterfield 8-7053. I picked up the receiver.

  “Number, please?” said the operator. Immediately I was cheered by her voice, and my fears subsided. She was every bit as nice-sounding as the operators in Cairo, and she was going to put me through to my dad.

  “Cairo, Illinois, please, ma’am. Cairo-six, oh-eight-four-five,” I repeated. My heart quickened inside me. Just hello — that’s all I want to hear! I told myself. Then I’ll hang up and run back to the room and no one will see me and I’ll be safe. I promise!

  “Illinois?” asked the operator. “Did you say Illinois, honey?”

  “Yes,” I answered, trying to lower my six-year-old voice. There was that name honey again.

  “Sweetie-pie,” piped the operator primly. “Bell Telephone operators are not allowed to accept long-distance calls placed by children.”

  “I’m eleven,” I pleaded.

  “Is there some grown-up at home who can make this call for you?” asked the operator.

  “No!” I said.

  “That’s what I thought,” said the operator. “Children like to play jokes over the telephone, so the company won’t take kiddy calls long distance. Now go and find your mommy or poppy, and then you can ask them to call long distance. Okay? Happy New Year!”

  All this for nothing! my inner voice croaked. Scram, Oscar, while the scramming is good! Held-back tears of disappointment throbbed in my jaw muscles. I hung up the receiver and wiped the prints off the telephone with the tail of one of the drapes. Back through the dining room I went, this time at a trot, which is all my burning ribs would allow, back through the parlor with its mighty chairs and lacquered tables, and upward I padded on the first stairway to the bedroom level.

  As my foot reached the top step, a key turned in the front-door latch and the bolt clicked back. I scampered upward, heart hammering as the room below me filled with happy voices. My adventure with the phone had made me a nervous wreck. On Lisl’s dresser was a bottle of Nervosa. The label claimed to clear the bloodstream of clot-forming anxieties. I swallowed a big gulp and waited for it to take effect. After a time Claire reappeared. She beckoned to me from the doorway. “C’mon, Oscar!” she said.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “My room! Mummy and Daddy have guests for tea downstairs,” said Claire. “They won’t come up again. Wait’ll you see the train, Oscar! I got the biggest, best layout I could find!”

  “It’s the Twentieth Century, Claire!” I nearly shouted when I got to Claire’s room and saw the engine. The Twentieth Century Express ran regular service from New York to Chicago. C
laire’s layout came with two terminals, New York’s Grand Central and Chicago’s Union Station.

  We ran the train back and forth, blew the whistle, and put smoke into its stack. “Are you happy, Claire?” I asked, glancing at her eyes. Her dreamy eyes did not look happy. “What’s the matter?” I asked, crouching in front of her in the middle of the oval of newly laid railroad tracks. “You have to be thrilled about this train! It’s what you wanted, Claire! If you asked ’em, they’d prob­ably buy you three more!”

  Claire looked down at the train. “I don’t want you to leave and go home, Oscar,” Claire said. “But I won’t be happy until you’re happy and that means when you get safely home. You see, you’re the first person in the whole wide world I’ve ever really truly cared about, Oscar.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Oscar. You.”

  I felt myself blush as red as a Lionel signal flare. “You love your mother and dad, too!” I said. “Not to mention your brother, wherever he is.”

  “I love them, of course, Oscar. But no one’s ever listened to me like you and taken me seriously before you. Now you have to go home, and I don’t want you to go.”

  “But how?” I asked. “I can’t jump onto your train, Claire. There’s nothing to scare me back onto it. Nothing can make me jump onto this layout and take me back to 1931 where I belong.”

  “I’ll get Daddy to pay for a real ticket on a real train,” said Claire.

  “Your dad won’t be happy to find a strange little boy in his apartment. The wrong kind of boy, too!” I added.

  Claire took a deep breath. “If we play our cards right, Oscar, we can get you home tonight.”