Toby Lived Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  Toby dropped the spoon and it clattered on her plate.

  “A friend of ours,” Mrs. Selwyn said. “Would anyone like some more chocolate pudding?”

  11

  TOBY’S BATHING SUIT FROM the year before was too small. It was faded, too, and couldn’t even be set aside as a hand-me-down for Anne.

  “We’ll have to go shopping for a new one,” Mrs. Selwyn said.

  Toby put it off. “This one’s still okay,” she said, pulling at the old suit to stretch it where it rode too high in the crotch and pinched. Shopping for clothes was something she did only with her mother, who had marvelous taste. She could pick something off the rack and it would be exactly right for Toby—the right color, the right size. They didn’t go shopping often—her mother said that clothes should never become more important than the person inside them—but when they did, it was always fun. Sometimes Toby’s mother would try on elaborate things she couldn’t afford, as if they were costumes. She’d pose in the dressing room like a celebrity, while Toby sat in a corner and admired her. Afterwards they’d usually go out for lunch together. A baby-sitter would be hired for Anne on those days, because she hated shopping and would become restless and whiny after just a few minutes.

  Mrs. Selwyn let Toby delay the shopping trip until a seam popped open on her bathing suit when they were at the beach.

  “Uh-oh! I can see everything!” Anne said.

  “Why don’t you just shut up!” Toby told her, but she was embarrassed and walked around with a towel tied at her waist for the rest of the day.

  The next morning, she and Mrs. Selwyn went to a neighborhood store, while Anne stayed home with Mr. Selwyn. He was going to teach her to play checkers. They were laying out the board on the kitchen table when Toby and Mrs. Selwyn left.

  As they went down the street together, Toby was self-conscious. Would people think she was related to this stranger? She remembered how she and her mother used to run sometimes, or walk holding hands, like girlfriends. Now she had to slow her own pace, because Mrs. Selwyn didn’t walk very fast. She wore a green print dress that hung way below her knees, and white orthopedic shoes. She could hardly know what was in fashion for somebody Toby’s age, and Toby hoped she wouldn’t try to make her buy an old-fashioned bathing suit, or one that was too babyish. The county provided a clothing allowance for the girls, but the foster parents were still in charge.

  At the store, Mrs. Selwyn looked at Toby carefully and said, “I think you’re a ten or a twelve in the pre-teens.”

  How would she know, Toby thought, but she only shrugged and began looking through the racks. She picked three suits and went quickly toward the dressing rooms, with Mrs. Selwyn behind her.

  “I’ll wait here,” Mrs. Selwyn said, closing the cubicle curtain between herself and Toby. “Just holler if you need any help.”

  Toby didn’t intend to do that. She could dress herself, couldn’t she? But she had trouble fastening the first suit, and after struggling with it for a few moments, she peeked out. “I can’t do the back,” she said.

  Mrs. Selwyn put her purse down on the ledge in the dressing room and began to fuss with the catch. Her hands were rough-skinned and unfamiliar. Toby felt a fresh yearning for her mother during this simple and maternal act. She wished she could turn around and find it was her mother behind her, smiling and teasing and telling Toby she was a double for Farrah Fawcett in that suit. She glanced back, but it was still Mrs. Selwyn, squinting, and biting her lip in concentration.

  “There,” she said, finally. “Now let me see you. Oh, Toby, you look beautiful in this one! Blue is such a good color for you. It brings out your eyes.”

  Toby looked at herself in the three-way mirror. It was a nice suit and it did flatter her, making her figure seem fuller and more mature. In the mirror, she could see Mrs. Selwyn behind her, plump and matronly, her head tilted in admiration and her hands clasped at her waist while she waited patiently for Toby to make up her mind. Toby stared at her, at the curve of her green-printed bosom, at the gray hair escaping its bun again. Then their eyes met, and Toby looked quickly away. “I’ll take this one,” she said.

  “Really? Without trying on the others? Okay. Why not? We’ll get back early and I can make something special for lunch. Food! That’s all I ever think about. You can see why I never had a figure like yours, Toby.”

  Toby took off the bathing suit and put on her clothes. As she came out of the dressing room, she said, “My mother can eat anything and not gain an ounce.” She sounded boastful and unfriendly to her own ears.

  But Mrs. Selwyn didn’t seem offended. She walked to the counter to pay for the bathing suit and have it wrapped. “Your mother’s lucky,” she said. “And I guess you take after her.”

  Toby took the package. “Thanks,” she said, and there was an awkward moment. Toby wanted to say something else to make up for her rudeness, but she didn’t know how. Mrs. Selwyn hadn’t given her a hard time, after all. “I mean for going with me and everything,” Toby added.

  “You’re welcome, dear. And wear it in good health,” Mrs. Selwyn said. “Now let’s go home. I’m starving.”

  12

  July 29, 1977

  Dear Mother,

  Today is the hottest day of the year so far. Sylvia gave me a fan for my room and on Sunday we’re all going to the beach again. Susan’s room is air-conditioned and if this keeps up I will sleep over. Next week she’s going to stay at her grandparents’ in New Jersey while her mother and father go to London, England.

  Last summer she went to camp. It’s called Witchee-Wahmee and it’s in Maine. They have tennis, swimming, water-skiing, archery, and arts and crafts. This year she decided not to go, mostly because she wants to be with me. Her mother said, Fine, I won’t have to sew on all those labels.

  For Jim’s vacation, we won’t go anywhere special, except to the beach and to the park for cookouts and stuff like that. He’s planted a vegetable garden in the back yard, and I have my own little patch where I grow radishes. I still don’t like radishes, but I chose them because they’re easy to grow. I can give some to the Schwamms.

  Is it hot where you are? Can you go swimming? When you write, don’t forget to answer my questions. I am writing this letter in my room and the fan is turning around and feels very good when it goes by me. Yesterday Jim said, It’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. When he brought the News home today there was a picture on the front page of a man doing it in front of his house! And another one of a lady in a bathing suit sitting on a block of ice.

  Anne lost another front tooth and she really looks funny. She put it under her pillow again and this time I heard Jim tiptoe into her room late at night to put money there and take the tooth. Anne really thinks the Tooth Fairy came and did it. She can’t suck her thumb because of the big hole. She says it doesn’t taste good any more.

  Twenty-six days until my birthday. I know you are going to be okay by then. Here are a few get-well kisses from me.

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  Toby

  13

  SYLVIA AND JIM KEPT a photo album with pictures in it of all the children who had lived with them. Anne liked to sit close to Sylvia on the sofa and turn the heavy black pages and ask questions, usually the same ones over and over again. “Is this Dennis?” she’d say, pointing to a photo of a skinny, shy-looking blond boy with a big cowlick. “Is he the one who had my room and always wet his bed? Is Judy the tall girl who’s all grown up now and has a baby?”

  Sylvia had a story for every page. “This one had the hiccups that day. That’s why his picture is all blurry. Oh, here’s John. He wouldn’t go to sleep without his teddy bear and the light on in the hall. Do you remember, Jim?”

  And Jim would nod behind his newspaper, the smoke from his pipe coming up like an answer.

  Toby enjoyed looking at the pictures, too, especially the ones of Constance. Whenever she visited, Constance would spend time in Toby’s room, talking about what it was like when s
he lived there, asking Toby what it was like now.

  One afternoon, while Susan was in New Jersey with her grandparents, Toby carried the album up to her room. The Selwyns had gone to visit friends, taking Anne with them. They asked Toby to go along, too, but she didn’t want to. She felt restless that day, and she had a slight stomach ache. But she didn’t tell Sylvia about it, thinking Sylvia might not want to leave her alone. And Toby wasn’t really sick. She just felt like being by herself.

  Her room was hot and stuffy. She pulled the shade halfway down to keep the sun out, and turned on the fan. Then she sat on the bed and opened the album. What an angry face Constance had in the earliest photographs—it was a wonder she didn’t break the camera! Her arms were folded in defiance, her mouth turned down in a sneer, and her hair stood up wildly in every direction. She looked ready to run away again, or worse.

  But in the later pictures she seemed transformed. She was a smiling Constance, tall and awkward, but sweetly posing for the camera. Of course, she had finally accepted the fact that she lived there, was part of the Selwyns’ family. Her own mother was dead by then, her father unable to go to work or be a parent in any way. The other children, Constance’s brothers and sisters, were too many for the Selwyns to take all at once. Besides, they already had Dennis and another small boy, and so Constance’s family had to be broken up.

  Toby imagined herself and Anne separated, and it was awful. Sometimes she couldn’t stand Anne, when she was bossy, or sly, or especially babyish. But they were sisters, and belonged together.

  Their situation wasn’t anything like Constance’s. She and Anne and her mother were a real family who cared about one another. They were just disconnected for a while, that’s all. It would be nice to have an older sister, though, someone like Constance maybe, who was tough and smart and didn’t seem afraid of anything.

  Toby shut the album and stretched out on her stomach. It ached a little more now, and she was getting a headache, too. Maybe she really was sick. She put her hand against her forehead, wondering if she had a fever. For the first time that day, she regretted being alone. She had never been sick away from home. She remembered when she’d had the mumps and was all swollen and miserable, and how her mother had read and sung to her and made a warm bandage to tie around her jaw.

  There was still no letter from her mother, except for the ones Toby composed inside her head. When she described them to Susan, they actually sounded like letters her mother might have written, funny and gay and affectionate.

  Miss Vernon said she wasn’t ready yet for visitors. Toby wanted to protest, saying she wasn’t a visitor, she was a daughter, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. There were all those dumb rules in places like that. And worse was the fear that her mother wouldn’t be glad to see her, or would still be acting the way she had that last night in Brooklyn. Toby knew they’d never live there again. The apartment had been rented to another family and the Goodwins’ belongings put into storage. But they could live somewhere else, couldn’t they? Maybe even in Queens, so that Toby could go to school with Susan in the fall. And her mother could become friends with Susan’s mother, and with the Selwyns, too. Toby pictured them all having dinner together. She daydreamed about that, the way she did about becoming a recording star.

  Now she rubbed her belly and pressed her fist into it to ease the cramps. She wished again that Sylvia were home, but when she looked at the clock, she saw that they hadn’t even been gone an hour.

  She decided to go to the bathroom. Maybe that would make her feel better. But when she pulled down her underpants to sit on the toilet, they were all stained—a brownish-red stain, as if she had done something in her pants! Can you do that and not even know about it? And then suddenly she realized what it was. She had it. She really had it. This was her period!

  But she didn’t have anything to use. She felt terribly excited and upset at the same time. If only her mother were here. If only Sylvia were home. Maybe she wouldn’t be back for hours.

  Toby was sitting on the toilet wondering what to do when the doorbell rang. Who could that be? Whoever it was, she wished they’d go away. This was the worst possible time to get company. “Go away, just please go away,” she whispered.

  But the doorbell rang again, and this time it was a long, insistent, piercing ring. Maybe it was the Selwyns back early and they’d lost their key. Maybe Anne had run ahead of them. Toby stuffed a wad of toilet paper into her panties and went downstairs. “Who’s there?” she called through the closed door.

  “It’s me. It’s Constance. Is that you, Toby? Open up.”

  She could hardly open the door quickly enough. “Constance! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” Toby threw herself at Constance, who was carrying packages in both arms, and almost dropped them.

  “Whoa! Hold it. Hey, what’s happening? What’s the matter? Let me put this stuff down.”

  “I got it,” Toby said.

  “Got what?” For a moment Constance looked at her blankly, and then she smiled, a slow, broad, delighted smile. She held out her hand and shook Toby’s. And then she hugged her. “Congratulations, hon. You are now a full-fledged woman.”

  Toby felt foolishly happy. And then she remembered. “Uh, Constance, I...I don’t have anything, you know, to use? And nobody else is home.”

  “Okay, okay,” Constance said. “Don’t go anywhere, all right? I’ll see you soon,” And she left.

  In fifteen minutes or so, she returned with a package from the drugstore. “Do you know how to use this?” she asked, handing the package to Toby.

  “I think so,” Toby said. “My mother showed me once last year. And I read a booklet the insurance company sent. I’ll be right back,” she said, heading for the stairs.

  “Use ice-cold water and soap on your panties,” Constance called up to her. “It’ll come right out. And if you have cramps, take an aspirin.”

  Constance knows everything, Toby thought, with a gush of admiration. By the time she came downstairs again, the cramps were almost gone.

  Constance was sitting in the kitchen, her bundles on the table in front of her. “Everything okay?”

  Toby nodded.

  “Want to see what I bought today?”

  “Sure.” Toby sat down, too.

  Constance had gone shopping again for the new apartment she and Arnie would live in after their wedding. She was always buying something—pot-holders or curtains or towels. Everything was yellow or blue, her favorite colors. Toby admired the new purchases. In one bag there were yellow place mats with scalloped edges, and yellow-and-blue-plaid napkins to go with them. In another, a large ornate frame. “This is for our wedding picture,” Constance said.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Toby told her. “I was looking at Jim and Sylvia’s photo album before you came, before everything happened. I was looking at pictures of you.”

  “What a little sourpuss I was. I almost broke the camera, didn’t I?” Constance said, and laughed.

  Toby blushed, because she’d had the same thought. “You really looked nice in your graduation picture,” she said, and meant it. In that one, Constance was standing between the big rosebushes in the back yard and she was wearing a tasseled cap and a long black gown. She held a rolled diploma in one hand.

  “Arnie took that, you know. I met him in high school.”

  “Childhood sweethearts,” Toby said, sighing. “Just like my mother and father.”

  “Uh-huh,” Constance said. “Say, Arnie should take some of you kids for the album, too. He can develop them at his place—8 x 10’s, or any size you’d like.”

  Toby stiffened slightly. “We’re not going to be here that long, so it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, most of the kids in the album really lived here.”

  Constance looked at her without speaking for a moment. Then she said, “You live here, too, Toby.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’ve been here almost four months, haven’t you?”

  Three months
and sixteen and a half days, Toby thought. “But I’m not staying!” she said. She was starting to feel awful, almost as if she might cry. Well, she wasn’t going to do that. She hadn’t cried once yet and she wouldn’t start now over something as stupid and silly as a photograph. It was probably because of her period that she felt this way. The booklet on menstruation from the insurance company explained that you can feel especially moody or sensitive on “those days.”

  Constance opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, and then she shut it. Instead, she began to gather her packages. “Well, kiddo,” she said, walking to the front door. “I’ll be going now. Tell Sylvia and Jim I dropped in, all right?”

  “All right,” Toby answered in her coolest voice. “Thank you,” she added politely. “For the stuff from the drugstore and everything.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Any time, hon. So long now.” And she was out the door.

  Big dope, Toby thought. Someone who carves up other people’s furniture. Constance didn’t know anything. Who would ever want a sister like her?

  Toby was angry with Constance for the rest of the day. That night, when she was in bed, she reached out and ran her fingers over the carved letters. Then she got up and put on the light. She found a pencil in the night-table drawer and wrote right under Constance’s name: is a jerk. She wrote it lightly, without pressing down at all, so that the words were hardly visible. But still she was breathless at the evidence of her own daring. She had never written on furniture before. Her letters looked faint and sneaky and cramped next to the large, bold, childish ones. She wet the tip of her finger with her tongue and erased what she had written, rubbing it into a black smudge before it disappeared. She shut off the light and got into bed again.

  Lying in the darkness, Toby realized the real trouble was that she loved Constance. Why else would she feel this angry and this sad at the same time? And she liked Arnie, who was so cheerful and noisy that being with him always seemed like a celebration. Most of all, she loved them together, the idea of their love for one another, of that easy kind of happiness. It was close to what she remembered her mother and father’s had been, even if they were different.