Best Friends

by Ann M. Martin

  “Ruby,” said Min, “I don’t even want to hear the end of that sentence.”

  Ruby snapped her mouth shut and stalked down the hallway, where she sat by herself on the floor outside the door to the library, glowering, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Not far away, a group of girls, already in costume and makeup, was laughing and playing a complicated clapping game while chanting, “Eeny-meeny DIS-aleeny, ooh, ah, AH-maleeny, atcha-katcha, ooma-raga, ugga-wugga OOH! ISH-biddly oten-doten.…” Ruby knew the game and was very good at it but chose to sit on the floor until she was called to the makeup table.

  This is all Aunt Allie’s fault, Ruby said to herself as she sat sullenly while her makeup (including lipstick!) was applied. Aunt Allie had made her self-conscious. There was really nothing good about Aunt Allie, Ruby decided. Except maybe the fact that she had finally found a house she wanted to buy, which meant that she would soon be moving out of the Row House. Ruby couldn’t wait.

  Her makeup applied, Ruby again sat alone, but this time she was preparing for her role as Alice Kendall. She stretched a little and did the breathing exercises she had invented. The exercises were supposed to help her concentrate and focus, but Ruby’s mind kept wandering and she found herself breathing in rhythm to “Eeny-meeny dis-aleeny, ooh, ah, ah-maleeny.…”

  Later, when the dress rehearsal was finally under way, Ruby was painfully aware that this time she had more of an audience than usual. Min, Gigi, Flora, Nikki, and plenty of other people were sitting in the auditorium, watching. Ruby did her best all afternoon and even managed to become teary-eyed when the fierce Harry Lang hurled his accusation at her.

  But on the way home that evening when Min said, “Ruby, my stars, you were splendid! You really looked like you were going to cry,” all Ruby could think was that she hadn’t actually cried. Not like before.

  Her performance was already slipping. She was washed up before opening night.

  Flora had listened to the tape of her interview with Mrs. Fitzpatrick twice and then had spent several hours writing down most of the conversation. (“That’s called transcribing,” Aunt Allie had told her, and she should know, since she was a writer.) Flora now realized that she was going to have to have a conversation with Mary Woolsey — possibly an uncomfortable one — about Isabelle, Mary’s aunt, and about people leaving their lives behind and starting over with new identities.

  Flora had also been looking through the notes she had made during the last few months when she had spoken with Mary or Min about Lyman Davis. And she had hauled the box of family papers out from under her bed and read through the letters several more times. But she still didn’t have a clear idea of what she was going to do with all the information. How could she present her project to the Camden Falls Historical Society so that it could be displayed at the town birthday festivities? A report wasn’t all that interesting, she thought, picturing some of the reports she’d handed in to teachers over the years — stapled together at one corner or (when she was younger) stuck between sheets of red construction paper. Flora wanted her part in the festivities to be memorable. After all, this was Camden Falls’s big birthday, and Camden Falls was now Flora’s home.

  Ruby’s part in the festivities would most certainly be memorable. And Nikki’s drawings would be framed and displayed in an actual art gallery, while Olivia’s photos would be mounted and displayed at another gallery. But where was Flora’s research leading? What was she going to do with her pile of letters and hours of transcribed tapes?

  Flora didn’t know, but for once she decided not to worry. Her next interview was with Mr. Pennington, and she needed to concentrate on that. On a Monday afternoon, she returned from school, called hello to Aunt Allie, who was clacking away at her computer, grabbed her notebook and tape recorder, and walked across Olivia’s yard to Mr. Pennington’s house.

  She rang the bell and immediately heard frantic barking and the sound of Jacques lumbering into the hallway, skidding on a rug, and banging into the doorjamb.

  The barking continued at a furious level until Mr. Pennington opened the door.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling. When Jacques saw Flora, he fell silent, then sent his tail flapping back and forth like laundry in the wind.

  “Hi,” Flora replied. She bent to pat Jacques.

  Mr. Pennington ushered Flora inside and said, “I feel honored to be interviewed. Where shall we sit?”

  “Anywhere is okay as long as I’m near an outlet,” Flora answered. “I need to plug in the recorder. Is it okay if I tape the interview?”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you for asking,” said Mr. Pennington, and Flora had a feeling that Min had already mentioned the recorder to him.

  Flora and Mr. Pennington sat down in the living room, Flora in an armchair and Mr. Pennington on the couch with Jacques beside him. Jacques fell asleep in an instant and was soon snoring loudly.

  Flora had been in Mr. Pennington’s house many times, and the living room was her favorite room of all. It was filled with more books than Flora had ever seen in one place except a library. The room was lined with shelves that extended from the floor all the way up to the ceiling, and every inch was occupied by books. They were tightly packed but orderly, and Mr. Pennington now told Flora that they were organized by a system and that he could locate any of his books in a matter of moments. “Fiction is over there,” he said, pointing, “poetry is there, drama there, and non-fiction is divided into lots of categories. There are biographies, autobiographies and memoirs, history, science. All alphabetized according to the author’s last name. A number of the history books cover the Depression,” he added, “which my family spent in a somewhat unusual manner, compared to other families, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. This is your interview, Flora.”

  Flora made her rehearsed introduction about Lyman Davis, then added, “When I was talking to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, she said that after her father lost his money, he had to let his staff go, and that one of those people was his chauffeur, Rudy Pennington. I said that a Rudy Pennington was my neighbor, and she guessed that you’re Rudy Pennington Junior. Is that right?”

  “It is. In nineteen twenty-nine, my father was employed as the Fitzpatricks’ driver. It wasn’t uncommon for white families, even those who lived in the North, to employ African-American help, only back then those workers were called the colored help.”

  Flora cringed. “Should I put that in my report?” she asked.

  “You don’t like that term, do you?”

  “No.” Flora felt uncomfortable.

  “Well, it’s up to you, of course. But it is the truth.”

  Flora changed the subject. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick also said that when your father was let go, he smiled.”

  Mr. Pennington grinned. “I don’t know whether he did or not, but that’s a nice touch for your report. And it certainly could be true, because my father always said that the best day of his life was the day he lost that job.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it was holding him back. My father was lucky to have a good job, especially with a family to support, and he was grateful for it. But, Flora, do you really think he wanted to be a driver all his life?”

  “No,” said Flora, who, in truth, could think of lots of jobs she wouldn’t want, certainly not for her entire life.

  “And it wasn’t just that driving was boring and a dead end. It was much more than that. There was something my father wanted desperately.”

  “What?”

  “Look around the living room. Can you guess?” asked Mr. Pennington.

  Flora looked at Jacques, at the tables holding the familiar framed family photographs, at the shelves and shelves of books, at the case she knew contained Mr. Pennington’s trumpet.

  “A nice life and a nice house?” she guessed, fairly certain that this wasn’t the answer Mr. Pennington was leading her toward.

  “That might have been part of it, I suppose,” said Mr. Pennington kindly, “but what he really wanted, Flora, almo
st more than anything except his wife and children, was an education.”

  “Oh,” said Flora, and then, “oh.”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the Fitzpatricks let my father go, he suddenly saw that he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted.”

  “But he was free already, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, yes, technically he was a free man. But his job had been holding him back because it was comfortable. Now, my father thought, as long as he had to reshape his life, he might as well take the opportunity to find a way to do what he’d always dreamed of — to get an education. So he packed us up and we moved in with his parents, who lived a few miles outside of Camden Falls. Imagine seven people crowded into a house that was small to begin with, but my grandparents were very kind, and they supported my father’s decision. Dad spent the next few years in school, while my mother and my grandparents worked at whatever jobs they could find.

  “Eventually,” Mr. Pennington continued, “my father graduated from college. He was the first person in his family to do so, and we had a big celebration. Oh, I remember that day. I don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone more proud than my grandparents, my mother, my brothers and I, and, of course, my father.

  “Later, Dad became a college professor himself. When I grew up, I went to college in Pennsylvania, but I wanted to come back to this area. I moved to Boston first, and then after I got married, my wife and I moved here. That was when I began teaching at your school, Flora.”

  “And then later you became the principal of the central school, right?”

  “Exactly right.”

  How different, thought Flora, were the Depression years for Mr. Pennington and his family than for Min and her family, for the Fitzpatricks, or for Mary Woolsey and her family.

  “Mr. Pennington,” she said, “do you know of any other people who were affected by Min’s father? I mean, by losing their money or getting fired or something?”

  Jacques rolled over on his back and Mr. Pennington rubbed his belly. “Well, let me see. There was the gardener at the Fitzpatricks’. I recall that after he lost his job he led a rather exciting life. He hit the road, doing a little work here, a little work there, to earn pocket money, catching free rides on trains whenever he felt like moving on.”

  “You mean he became a hobo?” exclaimed Flora.

  “I suppose so. Not a life I would have liked, but he did get to see the country. Then there was a man, Johnny something, who was part-time help at the Fitzpatricks’ and who was a friend of my father’s. I remember my dad saying one night after we had moved in with my grandparents that Johnny still hadn’t found another job, and I don’t think he ever did. A year or so later his wife left him and finally he just dropped out of sight.

  “Oh, and I can think of someone else you might be interested in hearing about,” said Mr. Pennington, shifting on the couch when Jacques rolled over again. “My mother knew Sonny Sutphin’s grandmother.” (Flora raised her eyes and looked at Mr. Pennington with increased interest.) “The Sutphins were a respectable family in Camden Falls, what you’d call middle class nowadays. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they were doing fine, and your grandfather had invested their savings. They lost it all in nineteen twenty-nine, but quite unexpectedly they came into a large inheritance in nineteen thirty or thirty-one and were then far wealthier than they’d been before the crash.”

  Flora thought of Sonny in his shabby clothes, wheeling himself up and down Main Street every day. She thought of his tiny, dark apartment, which she’d visited with Mr. Pennington before the holidays. “What happened?” she asked. Surely the Sonny she knew now didn’t have any large inheritance.

  “The money was spent rather” — Mr. Pennington paused — “erratically. It really was a great deal of money and it caused some wild behavior in subsequent generations of Sutphins. When Sonny came into his portion of the inheritance, the first thing he did was spend most of it on a fancy car — maybe a Porsche, I’m not sure — and he hadn’t had it very long when he was in a horrible accident. He was driving way too fast and he crashed the car late one night. His brother was in the car, too, and he was killed.”

  “Oh,” said Flora in a very small voice, imagining not Sonny and his Porsche but her family and their car on that snowy evening. “Is that how Sonny got hurt?”

  Mr. Pennington nodded.

  Flora tried to collect her thoughts, which were tumbling around in her head. She was glad the tape recorder was running because she was having trouble keeping track of all the people Mr. Pennington had mentioned. There was the hobo (an actual hobo — very exciting), and the man who wasn’t heard from again, and now Sonny Sutphin and his family. And, of course, there was Mr. Pennington himself. What would have happened, Flora wondered, if the Fitzpatricks hadn’t lost their money and Mr. Pennington’s father hadn’t lost his job? Flora might not even know Mr. Pennington. He might never have moved to the Row Houses. Flora couldn’t imagine the Row Houses, or her life now, without Mr. Pennington.

  Later, when Flora was leaving, she stood on tiptoe and threw her arms around her neighbor. It was time to go home to transcribe their talk and to think about what on earth she was going to say to Mary Woolsey when it was time for their formal interview. Mr. Pennington had started to close the door behind Flora when he stuck his head outside and said, “By the way, what are you going to do with your information, Flora?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied.

  “What about making a book? I think you’re going to have enough material. You could bind your research into a book.”

  A book, thought Flora. Could she really write a book?

  Nikki Sherman was pedaling fast. She liked the stretch of road that led from the end of her drive, through the countryside, and into Camden Falls, and she was happy for an opportunity to ride her bicycle to Needle and Thread. The sun warmed her hair, making it smell of moss and wildflowers and springtime. On either side of the road, oaks and maples dipped their branches in the breeze, their new leaves a haze of green against the gold of the sun. Nikki felt as if she were flying along through a dreamworld.

  She reached the top of a small hill and, as soon as she was coasting fast enough, stuck her legs out straight as she sailed toward the bottom. She considered removing her hands from the handlebars but decided against that, remembering the cautionary tale her mother had often told her and Tobias and Mae about the time when she was eight and decided to coast down a hill with her hands held high — and wound up falling off the bike and breaking her wrist. The thought zipped through Nikki’s mind — a blip only — and she turned to other matters, her hands gripped firmly around the bars.

  It was a fine Sunday, and Nikki had left a happy household behind. By making a down payment provided by Mrs. DuVane, who was a high school classmate of Nikki’s mother and who periodically stepped in (not always tactfully) to help out the Shermans, Nikki and her family were now the owners of their first computer. Nikki was excited, although she did not think that buying things over time was a safe way to shop. She knew too well that payments could mount up and bills could become overwhelming. But her mother had insisted, saying that while she was grateful to Mrs. DuVane for the down payment, she was determined to provide for her family. Nikki could hear her unspoken words as well — that her mother was determined to do what her father had not done.

  In any case, the computer was going to be a great help with Mrs. Sherman’s résumé, with college applications (if Tobias decided to take that step), and with Nikki’s homework and even Mae’s. When Nikki had hopped on her bicycle twenty minutes earlier, her mother and Tobias had been sitting together at the kitchen table, studying the computer manual, while Mae played with Paw-Paw.

  Her family, Nikki realized, seemed complete without her father, and she hummed as she pedaled toward town.

  Flora and Olivia had asked Nikki if she wanted to spend the afternoon at Needle and Thread. The Camden Falls birthday celebration wa
s drawing closer, and preparations were under way at the store for two exhibits: one of antique quilts and one of new quilts to be entered in a contest. Furthermore, Min and Gigi were readying the Needle and Thread float for the town’s parade.

  Flora was terribly excited about the quilt exhibits. “You should see what people have been making. All these cool patterns — kaleidoscopes and wedding rings, log cabin blocks, all kinds of stars. Some of the patterns are so intricate. And the color palettes …”

  Nikki tried to look interested when Flora started talking about the quilts, but every time the subject came up, she could feel her mind drifting. The float was a different story. It was to depict colonial women and girls at a quilting bee. So not only did a colonial scene have to be created for the float itself, but colonial costumes had to be made for everyone who would be riding on the float. Nikki liked the challenge of turning the flatbed of a truck into the setting of a seventeenth-century quilting bee. Even working on the costumes sounded like fun.

  Nikki zoomed onto Main Street, then slowed her pace and walked her bike along the sidewalk. She waved to the Fongs through the window of their studio. She felt in her pocket for money to buy a soft drink as she passed the grocery store, but her pocket was empty. She peered through the open doorway of Sincerely Yours but saw only a couple of stray workmen, so she continued on her way, past Heaven, past Zack’s, and then she was standing outside Needle and Thread. She locked her bicycle to a metal grate under the window and stepped through the door.

  “Hi!” called Olivia and Flora.

  “Hi!” said Nikki. “I’m here to help.”

  Flora remembered how timidly Nikki used to enter Needle and Thread, as if she weren’t sure she had a place there. But now she strode inside and flopped down on one of the couches. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Help us with Lacey’s costume,” replied Flora.