True Blue

by Jane Smiley

  Tack Trunk

  Brush

  Chapter 12

  AT LUNCH ON FRIDAY, BARBIE ASKED ME IF I WANTED TO SPEND the night that night—I could borrow some pajamas from them, then her mom would drive us to my house, and she would “continue with her equestrian career.”

  I said, “You still want to take lessons?”

  “Mom said I could take ten lessons, and if I wasn’t bored with it by then, I could take ten more.” I couldn’t see how she would get bored with it, but I nodded. Then I remembered. I asked, “You know your cousin Leah, the one I met last fall?”

  “The quiet one who needs to sign up for the Famous Writers’ School?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an ad. If you’re one of the quiet ones, you send them your book, and they get it published. Mom says that Alexis and I don’t qualify.”

  “Yes, her.”

  “The one who is going out with your brother, Danny?”

  I stared. Then I said, “That one.”

  “They’ve gone to the movies three times and for a walk once.”

  “For a walk?”

  Barbie shrugged. “That’s all I know. Maybe Alexis will know more. We’ll ask her tonight.”

  It was a strange thought, Danny going for a walk. I mean, yes, I had seen Danny walking around our ranch, out to the barn, over to the pasture, up the hill. But when I thought of him, he was always on a horse, galloping, most likely, or in his car, or coming through the gate in Jake Morrisson’s shoeing truck. One of my earliest memories of Danny—I was maybe four and he was maybe eight—was of him standing still, absolutely still, perched on the haunches of a horse, as the horse walked and then trotted around the arena Daddy and his brothers had back in Oklahoma. Danny held his arms out, to keep his balance, for a minute or two, then he crossed them over his chest and the horse just kept trotting. It was in those days that he learned to do a backflip off a horse, landing on his feet. He did that trick for a couple of years, but when he started getting tall, he stopped. Maybe standing still on the back of that trotting horse was the closest I ever saw to Danny just plain walking.

  As for spending the night at the Goldmans’ house, what a wonderful invitation. I had slept the night before, but only because I was exhausted from sitting next to Spooky’s box the night before that. A vacation from Blue, Spooky, and any floating slender ladies in black boots with black cats in their arms was just what I needed. When I called Mom from the principal’s office after school to ask if I could go, she said, “Oh, that’s a good idea.”

  I didn’t quite understand her tone, though I was happy to get permission. I said, “Why?”

  “Well, someone was still here when someone else got home from the feed store, and then the first someone helped the second someone unload the feed sacks and put them in the feed room, and everything was going fine, but then the second someone forgot to say thank you, and so the first someone got a little chip on his shoulder and said, ‘Thank you, too, Dad!’ But it will all blow over by morning, I’m sure.”

  “Barbie is coming for another riding lesson.”

  “That will be fun.”

  Of course, I had to be prepared for strange food at the Goldmans’. In this case, the new food was called a “keesh.” I said, “That rhymes with ‘sheesh,’ ” which was an expression our principal, Mr. Canning, always used, as in “Sheesh! You kids are out of control this morning!”

  Barbie and Alexis laughed as if this were the joke of the century, so we got off the bus in a good mood.

  “Quiche” turned out to be a custard pie, but not sweet, with cheese and bacon. There were also some artichokes with garlic butter, a salad, and homemade chocolate ice cream for dessert. Alexis and Barbie did not act as if this were a special thing, and Mrs. Goldman, who had made it that day, said, “Now, Abby, this batch has lots of crème de menthe in it. I hope you won’t mind that.”

  I didn’t know what crème de menthe was, so I did the polite thing and ate my portion. It was very minty and very chocolaty, so minty that it made my nose tickle until I had to sneeze. As we were going up to their room, Barbie said, “At least I’m not staggering. Are you?”

  Alexis said, “No. Sober enough.”

  I said, “Why would you be staggering?”

  Barbie said, “You too. She put a lot of crème de menthe in, more than last time. Crème de menthe is seventy proof.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means it’s thirty-five percent alcohol.”

  Alexis said, “The more alcohol she puts in, the easier it is to scoop out. She says.”

  We continued up the stairs. I didn’t answer, but maybe I made a noise. Barbie turned to look at me when we got to the second floor. She said, “We’re joking. I bet there was a tablespoon of booze in your bowl of ice cream at the most.”

  I didn’t say that that was the first tablespoon of “booze” I had ever had. I said, “Maybe that’s why I sneezed.”

  “Maybe,” said Barbie.

  For the next two hours, we played games. I know it was two hours, because for the first hour, Alexis and I played Concentration while Barbie practiced her violin, and for the second hour, Barbie and I played a word-guessing game called Jotto while Alexis practiced the piano. When it wasn’t my turn, I sometimes looked over at whoever was practicing. It wasn’t like they had to do it, though they did have to do it. Each one was intent—staring at the music, practicing short parts over and over until they sounded right, then fitting the parts together, practicing slowly but evenly, then speeding up the tempo, putting as much together as sounded right, and then starting somewhere else, and fitting that in. It was like training a horse, but it was training your own fingers. I liked it.

  When they were both finished, we played a round of Spaghetti, which is Concentration, except you use two packs of cards, and you spread them around the whole room. You have to move around, and the mess of the cards seems more difficult at first, but actually it’s a little easier, even though there are so many cards. What you do is think, Jack of hearts/piano leg or Four of clubs/end of bookshelf. Even after you’ve forgotten it, somehow it stays in your mind, so that when you see the jack of hearts or the four of clubs, “piano leg” or “end of bookshelf” comes into your mind. Though Alexis had beaten me at Concentration and I had never guessed, or even heard of, one of Barbie’s Jotto words, avert, I won the Spaghetti game. I averted embarrassment.

  Then we started Monopoly, but before we were halfway to Connecticut Avenue, we were yawning. Alexis said, “We used to go to Atlantic City.”

  I said, “Where is Atlantic City?”

  “It’s in New Jersey. All the streets on this game are in Atlantic City. We used to ride the Reading Railroad between Atlantic City and Philadephia, then to New York. It was weird to come out here to California, and drive to the ocean, and have it be on the other side. It took Dad a year not to get lost every time he made a right turn when he came to the water.” Alexis yawned.

  Barbie said, “Who’s riding the gray horse now?”

  “Danny rode him this week.”

  “I want to ride him.”

  I thought about this, then said, “For now, I want you to be closer to the ground.”

  “Just in case,” said Alexis.

  “Just in case,” I repeated.

  “I think he likes me.”

  “Do tell,” said Alexis.

  “He was staring deep into my eyes.”

  “He stares,” I said. “He stares at everything.”

  “What does that mean?” said Alexis.

  I said, “I don’t know. I can’t tell. Sometimes I think he’s just interested, but other times I think he’s looking for something, or looking at something that we can’t see.” I didn’t mean to say this. Barbie and Alexis both turned toward me.

  Barbie said, “Like what?”

  “Oh, well, like this, I was standing next to him, petting him, and he was staring, and a couple of moments later, our dog, Rusty, c
ame trotting into the barn and set a kitten on the ground. He saw them coming before I did.”

  “She brought you a kitten?”

  I nodded.

  “Where was the mother cat?”

  “No idea. It was almost dark by that time, and when my mom went out to have a look the next day, there was no sign of a black cat or any other kittens. But did Blue just see them coming, because horses have good night vision, or did he hear them, or did he know they were coming in some other way?”

  “What else has he seen?” said Barbie.

  But I couldn’t say it, so I said, “It’s a cute kitten. Our one female barn cat is tabby, and Mom said a tabby cat can’t produce a black kitten. But it was all right. Not hurt or anything. So, it’s a mystery.”

  “I love that word,” said Alexis.

  “What word?”

  “MMMMMYSSSStery.”

  We laughed.

  “Last year I read about twenty-five Agatha Christies. My favorite two were Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia, but there was another one, too. It was called The Mirror Crack’d.” She deepened her voice. “Out flew the web and floated wide; the mirror crack’d from side to side; ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried the Lady of Shalott.”

  I said, “Who’s the Lady of Shalott?”

  “Oh, she’s this girl who kills herself and comes floating down the river toward Camelot. No one knows her, so she’s scary, and they all wonder about her. I didn’t like the book that much, but I said the poem to myself a lot. ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side.’ ” She shook her shoulders. “It was so creepy!” She grinned.

  Barbie said, “Yes, but I like Poe better.” She turned to me. “Did you ever read ‘The Black Cat’?”

  I shook my head.

  “Talk about creepy! I was in Mrs. Lawson’s class in sixth grade when she read a story aloud called ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ where this guy puts a body inside a wall, and then the heart of the body beats louder and louder and you don’t know whether he’s really hearing it, or whether he’s just going crazy from guilt.”

  “I had Mr. Jacobs.”

  “I thought they all read that one.”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, ‘The Black Cat’ is sort of like that, but instead of the murdered person’s heart making the noise, it’s a cat. I mean, it’s the second cat—he hanged the first cat just because he felt like it, after putting its eye out with a knife—”

  I said, “You read that?”

  “Well, it’s Poe. For some reason, you are allowed to read Poe even if you aren’t allowed to stay up and watch Night of the Living Dead.” Barbie and Alexis exchanged a glance.

  I said, “What’s Night of the Living Dead?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Barbie. “The graves open and all the dead people appear with lots of makeup and walk around like this.” She paused for a moment, then stood up and did a kind of stiff, hunched, sideways stagger across the room, with her mouth half open. It was a joke, but it was sort of scary even so.

  Alexis said, “I hated that ‘Black Cat’ story. I like the dog in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ It’s not a bad dog or an evil dog—they’ve just put something around its mouth to make it glow in the dark as it runs across the moor. You feel like you could bring that dog home and get him up on the couch and make friends with him.”

  “The MOOOOOR!” exclaimed Barbie. “What do you think a MOOOOOr is?”

  “A moor is an open plain,” said Alexis. “They have them in England. A MOOOR is where the MYSSSTERY begins.” She spoke in such a deep gasping voice that we shivered and then laughed.

  Then I said, “Do you guys believe in ghosts?”

  “Why?” said Alexis.

  “I just wondered.”

  Neither of them answered, and then Alexis got up and came back with two fat candles. She set them down on the floor in front of us and lit them with a match. She set the book of matches on the floor beside the shorter of the two candles. They were both white, and in the darkness of the room, the glow of the flame traveled down the column of each candle, drawing our gaze and making the room seem very black.

  “Listen to this,” she said.

  Bridle

  Racing Cart/Sulky

  Chapter 13

  “MMM,” SAID BARBIE. SHE GRABBED MY HAND.

  Alexis said, “You know our cousin Leah?”

  I nodded.

  “She has this friend in her class at the high school, and he has two cousins who are brothers down in Los Angeles. The older brother is a junior and the younger brother is a freshman. They started going to school together this year for the first time since elementary school. Anyway, the older brother is one of the popular kids, and the younger brother is not—he wears glasses and keeps to himself and stuff, but the older brother has always been nice to him. Anyway, the older brother is always in a group of friends, and the younger brother sees them around the school, and one day he says, ‘You’ve introduced me to all your friends but that girl.’ And the older brother—I think his name is Larry—says, ‘What girl?’ and the young brother, who I think is named Freddie, says, ‘The girl with the red hair, who’s always right behind you.’

  “So Larry says, ‘We don’t know any girls with red hair,’ and Freddie drops it because he’s one of those guys who’s used to thinking he must be wrong. And then he doesn’t see the girl anymore for three or four days. The next time he sees her, he’s a little surprised, because she’s sitting next to Larry in the school library, and while Larry is studying, Freddie sees the girl put a note in Larry’s biology book and then get up and walk away. That afternoon, when Larry is taking Freddie home in his car, Freddie asks him what the note said, and of course it turns out there is no note, and Larry never saw any redhead—he was alone at the library table the whole time. So Freddie doesn’t say anything more because he doesn’t want to get teased—he’s always getting teased.

  “After that, Freddie sees the red-haired girl all the time. Sometimes she’s by herself; sometimes she’s with Larry’s group. Sometimes she’s RIGHT NEXT TO LARRY, putting notes in his pockets or writing things in his books. It’s like she really wants him to like her, and he’s just ignoring her and she can’t get through to him. Every time Freddie sees her, she looks sad, but he’s afraid to go up to her. In the lunchroom, he sees the girl do things like move Larry’s glass of milk, or, once, knock it off the table, and Larry just acts like she doesn’t exist.”

  “She DOESN’T exist!” said Barbie.

  “Remember, it’s the beginning of freshman year and Freddie doesn’t have many friends, or any friends, so he doesn’t have anyone to tell the story to, but one day Larry can’t take him home, so he’s waiting for the bus outside of the school, and he hears two girls talking about this girl named Mary Lynne, who would have graduated three years before, but one day she disappeared, and she never came back to school and she was never found. The FBI has been looking for her, or her body, for the whole time, but it’s like she vanished into thin air. So Freddie, who usually doesn’t talk to anyone, says, ‘What color was her hair?’ and one of the girls says, ‘Red. She had long red hair.’ ” She looked at Barbie and me. She said, “I swear this happened. Leah told me.”

  “Oh, please,” said Barbie. “But do go on.” She squeezed my hand again.

  “Okay. So the next day, Freddie sees her. She’s sitting in the bleachers after school, watching the swim team. Larry is a diver on the swim team, and she is watching him. Freddie has missed the bus, and has to wait for Larry to be finished with practice, so he’s waiting. When he sees her, he decides to talk to her. She’s sitting by herself and staring at the diving board. Larry is doing jackknifes and stuff.

  “So Freddie climbs up the bleachers, and as he gets closer to her, she moves away, just sliding down the bleachers, not running or anything, but he just can’t get close to her, and he also can’t say whether she sees him—she makes it seem as though she’s just moving, not running away. That night, Fr
eddie says, ‘Did you ever hear that a girl disappeared once?’ And Larry says, ‘Yeah. That happened when I was in eighth grade. You must have been in sixth grade.’

  “ ‘What was her name?’

  “ ‘I don’t know. Something like Mary Louise, Mary Ellen. Oh—Mary Lynne Murphy.’

  “So, a couple of days later, he sees her again in the hall when he’s late to class. She’s standing by Larry’s locker. And he says her name, and she turns to look at him, but not like a person—her face doesn’t change expression. It’s just that her head turns and then she looks through him, and that’s when he realizes that she’s a ghost. That’s when he realizes that being a ghost is the reason her clothes look old-fashioned. But now he can’t figure out what this has to do with Larry.”

  Barbie said, “You mean like she’s wearing round-collared blouses and circle pins instead of button-downs?” To me, she said, “Don’t listen to her. It’s just a story.”

  I said, “Do ghosts have to die violently to get to be ghosts?”

  Alexis nodded.

  She said, “Leah said it was true. It was in the LA Times.” She tossed her head. “That night before bed, he goes into Larry’s room and tells him what he thinks about the girl and the ghost. But Larry just tells him he’s crazy, and if he doesn’t shut up about it, he’s going to have to tell their parents that Freddie is acting weird again.”

  I said, “Did he act weird before?”

  “I guess he had nightmares that were so bad he had to go to a psychoanalyst.”

  I didn’t know what this was, but it sounded scary.

  “There,” said Barbie. But she still had my hand. The candles flickered, and one of them seemed to go out, then flared up again.

  “Freddie was now convinced that the ghost of Mary Lynne had something to tell and that she had chosen Larry to tell it to. And really, deep down, he was afraid that maybe Larry was chosen because he knew something about the disappearance, but Freddie couldn’t imagine what that would be, since in eighth grade, Larry was just a kid. So Freddie goes into Larry’s room again, and Larry is listening to records, not doing homework or anything.”