Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones

by Betsy Byars

  “I told you so,” Deanie said. There was no pleasure in her voice at all.

  The two girls looked at each other. Their eyes, the soft brown eyes of their mother, shifted to look at their father. He was signaling the waiter for another glass of wine.

  Deanie pushed her plate away too. “This doesn’t taste like real steak either,” she said. This time when she blinked her eyes it was to hold back her tears.

  DEANIE COULD NOT SLEEP. The lights flickering on the ceiling of the motel room, the happy shouts from the swimming pool—“Mom, watch this! Look at me!”—only made her feel worse.

  She turned over in bed, pulling the sheet with her. She sighed aloud.

  Her usual nighttime fantasy—that John Travolta was in love with her—would not work tonight. Even one of her favorite lines—“Dance with me, Deanie”—had a flat ring. It might as well have been spoken by, say, Bob Parotti from her homeroom.

  “Will you lie still!” Clara hissed. “I’m trying to sleep.” She lifted her head and frowned. In the thin light that filtered through the curtains her face looked as wrinkled as her pajamas.

  “I can’t help it. I’m restless.” Deanie turned over again.

  “Yeah, restless.” Clara’s tone implied there was much more to her sister’s twisting and sighing than that.

  Deanie glanced warningly at the other bed, where their father lay sprawled on the sheets in his pajamas. He was snoring softly.

  “Anyway, I’m just as miserable about this as you are. I hate strangers.” Clara flopped back on her pillow.

  Deanie watched the ceiling. The two weeks with her father, which she had looked forward to all spring, were ruined. She had thought her only competition was Clara. She loved competing with Clara. All you had to do to upset Clara was to tell her, while she was eating Rice Krispies, that a woman had found a used Band-Aid in hers one time.

  But Delores, flying in from Chicago, being very funny, very bright, great company, well, there wasn’t going to be any pleasure in that competition. Deanie saw herself pushed into the background like one of the losers in a beauty pageant, wearing a bright frozen smile while inside seething with pain and disappointment.

  She turned and wadded her pillow under her cheek. Outside, at the pool, someone cried, “Mom! Harold dropped my Barbie doll in the deep end!”

  Good, Deanie muttered to herself.

  “Mom, she had on her mink stole and formal!”

  Even better.

  “He’s going to have to buy me another one!”

  Deanie sighed again. She ran her fingers through her hair. She had planned to get up early, wash and blow-dry her hair, but now that seemed pointless. She wished she were at home. A new boy had moved into the apartment next to Marcia’s, and Marcia had showed him Deanie’s picture and he had said, “She’s got sexy eyes.” By the time she got home, he would have met somebody else. Anybody could have sexy eyes if they used the right makeup.

  “Angh,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  “Did you say something?”

  “No.”

  “Then be quiet.”

  She tried John Travolta again. It was no use. When her life was going well, so did her fantasies. She and John Travolta spun and dipped and twirled without a mistake. When her life went bad, Travolta became as clumsy and heavy-footed as Bull Durham in her school, who danced like he was making a tackle.

  She turned one more time, easing onto her side so as not to disturb Clara.

  When she was settled, she muttered, “And I gave up cheerleading camp for this.”

  “You did not give up cheerleading camp,” Clara said, pouncing on the words like a cat. “Mom wouldn’t let you go. She thinks cheerleaders are juvenile and stupid and sexist.”

  “She thinks that now. When she was a girl, she wanted to be a cheerleader like everybody else. She tried out and didn’t get it.”

  “Mom never tried out for cheerleader.”

  Deanie went up on one elbow. “Aunt Flo told me. She said Mom cried when she didn’t get it. Mom was first alternate, and she used to get down on her knees at night and pray that a regular would get sick.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Deanie fell back on her pillow. “It’s true. Mom thinks everything is sexist that she’s too old to do. I think being a cheerleader is neat. And when I’m forty, I’m not going to—”

  “Girls.” Their father turned his face toward them. His head hovered over the pillow. “You have got to get some sleep.”

  “All right, but didn’t Mom try out for cheerleader when she was in high school?”

  “I didn’t know her then,” he said, falling back on his pillow. “We met in college.”

  Outside there was the sound of a splat on the pavement. “There’s your old Barbie.”

  “She’s ruined! Mom, Barbie’s ruined.”

  Deanie sighed and closed her eyes. “I wish Barbie was the only thing that was ruined,” she said to herself.

  JOHN D JONES, JR., had never been bored in his life. This was because he had the constant companionship of the most intelligent, witty, and creative person in the world—himself.

  To pass the time on the airplane, he was working on one of the chapters in his book. It was titled “You Are Smarter Than Your Teachers,” and he was bent over his paper, making up the questions that would go at the end of the chapter.

  I) If your teacher genuinely doesn’t like you, you should

  (a) run to your parents and say, “Boo-hoo, my teacher doesn’t like me.”

  (b) blame your bad grades on the fact that your teacher hates you, say things like, “Well, what did you expect? I told you she only gives A’s to her pets!”

  (c) say to yourself, “Many people will not like me in this world. That is their misfortune. I, who have better taste than they, like myself very much.”

  He was putting a period at the end of this sentence when the stewardess touched his shoulder. He looked up at her, startled.

  “Would you like one of our inflight coloring books?” she asked.

  “No.” He gave her an expressionless look. He folded the corner of his paper over his writing so she couldn’t read it.

  “Are you writing a little story?” she asked, smiling, leaning closer.

  “No.”

  He resisted the temptation to tell her he was writing quite possibly the most important and influential book of the century, a book that would change children and their lives forever.

  The stewardess hesitated, then moved on down the aisle, looking for someone else to assist.

  John D waited for his mother to say “The stewardess was just trying to be nice,” but she was talking to the man beside her.

  “Tell me about Pipe Island,” she was saying. “This is my first visit, and I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Well, let’s see. It’s shaped like one of those long Indian pipes—that’s how it got its name. Creek Indians lived there. The boy’ll be interested in that.”

  John D kept writing.

  “Up at the harbor end, my sister tells me, they’ve got a mall now and a McDonald’s, condominiums, marinas. They filled in the marsh and made an eighteen-hole golf course.”

  “That does not sound like progress.” His mother smiled. “I was looking forward to an island.” She drew an isolated circle of land in the air with her hands. “You know, remote …”

  “Where will you be staying?”

  “In a house. My friend who made the arrangements said it’s down at the end of the island.”

  “You won’t have to worry about condominiums down there. You won’t be bothered except by fishermen.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  She began to move objects around in her purse. She pulled out her lipstick.

  “Oh, one thing, ma’am. There’s been a powerful current running off Pipe Island this year. If you do any swimming, you’d better watch out for it.”

  “What kind of a current? I know absolutely nothing about the oce
an.” She smiled. “Except that I don’t want to swim in it.”

  “Well, as my sister tells it, you’re all right in the shallow water, but if you go beyond the swells, well, it’ll take you right on out. Three people already drowned this summer, my sister said.”

  “But that’s terrible.”

  “They were all people like yourself, ma’am, tourists who think the ocean’s nothing but a big swimming pool. If you could see what-all’s under there, you wouldn’t go in over your knees.”

  “Did you hear that, John D?” his mother asked, turning to him.

  He put a period at the end of his sentence and circled it. That was a sign to himself that this sentence was perfect and should never be changed.

  “I don’t plan on doing any swimming,” he reminded her without looking up. “It doesn’t affect me.”

  “Yes, but Sam’s daughters will probably be swimming. They should be warned.”

  He looked up at her. She had paused with her lipstick just below her lips.

  “Yes, they probably should be. That can be your first motherly duty.”

  “John D—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve begun our descent,” the stewardess said over the loudspeaker. “Please extinguish all smoking materials and fasten your seat belts. Return your seat to its upright position …”

  John D’s mother quickly moved the lipstick over her lips and dropped it into her purse. The plane was just breaking through the clouds, and she looked out the window at the ocean.

  “Beautiful!” she said. “Look, John D, there’s the island and it is shaped like a pipe. Look, John D, we’re staying way down at the end. It is remote.”

  The man touched his mother’s arm. “When the wind comes from the north,” he said, “that’s usually when the currents run strong. Everybody that’s been drowned was drowned when the wind came from the north.”

  The way he said it made John D think of a disaster movie made cheaply for TV. When the wind comes from the north, someone will he pulled beneath the murky waters! Who will be the tide’s next victim? Tune in Thursday night at nine for—

  “It’s been nice talking to you, ma’am. I hope you and the boy have a real nice vacation.”

  “Thank you.”

  “FLEAS!” CLARA YELLED. “SEE, there are fleas in this house. I told you.”

  “There are no fleas,” Deanie said.

  “Well, what is that? Right there on my leg. Look! What is that?”

  “Dirt.”

  “Does dirt jump?”

  “Yours probably does.”

  “I’m telling you, there are fleas on me.”

  “Well, go buy yourself some flea collars, one for each ankle.”

  “That is not funny.”

  Deanie was practicing cheerleading routines in the living room of the beach house. Clara was sitting at the table, examining her legs. Their father had driven to the airport to pick up Delores and John D.

  Deanie did not glance in Clara’s direction. “Gimme a W!” she begged the rattan sofa. “Gimme an O!” she asked the open window. “Gimme an L,” she turned to ask the kitchen.

  “That is a flea,” Clara said, bending over her leg.

  “Gimme a V,” Deanie went on. “Gimme an E! Gimme an S! Yayyyy, Woooooolves!” She leaped into the air, arms over her head, legs apart, and then landed heavily on the wooden floor.

  Clara was looking at her fingers. The flea had been caught and was now trapped between Clara’s thumb and forefinger. Clara made sure it was there, and then looked up at her sister. She watched her critically.

  Deanie was now leaping into the air to celebrate an imaginary touchdown. “Yay, Wo-oo-oo-oolves!” she yelled. She did the word wolves as if she were howling. She loved that. It gave her goose bumps when everybody in the stadium did it. It was the best thing about getting a touchdown.

  “You’re not going to get it for cheerleader,” Clara predicted flatly. She was holding her flea in her lap as if she were drinking tea.

  Deanie turned, fists against her chest, ready for the next cheer. “How do you know? You’re not even in my school.”

  “You’re not the type.”

  “I’m as much the type as Cindy Annetto.”

  “No, you aren’t. Anyway, nobody with skinny legs ever gets to be cheerleader, and you’ve got skinny legs.”

  “I do not.”

  Chin up defiantly, Deanie turned and went back to her cheers. “We got the team, yeah, team,” she chanted. “We got the pep, yeah, pep. We got the—”

  “You got the flea, yeah, flea!” Clara interrupted. She opened her fingers and threw the flea in Deanie’s direction as if she were bowling.

  Deanie stopped abruptly. She turned. She walked slowly toward Clara. “Now, just what did you do that for?”

  “Because I felt like it.”

  “You felt like throwing fleas on people? You’re sick, you know that? You need to see a head doctor.”

  “If anybody in this family needs a head doctor, it’s you!” Clara said.

  “I’m not the one who’s throwing fleas at people.”

  “Well, I’m not the one who kisses herself in the mirror and gets lipstick all over the glass!”

  “Clara!” Deanie drew in her breath. “Clarrrrra!”

  “And,” Clara went on with the confidence of someone who is hitting the mark, “I don’t use a mouthwash that makes me ‘Kissy clean’ and I don’t use deodorant that makes me ‘close-up fresh’ and I don’t—”

  “No, you don’t wear deodorant at all. That’s why you smell like a horse—and to complete the picture, you also snort like a horse.”

  “I do not!”

  “And you grunt like a pig and screech like an owl and pick fleas off yourself like an orangutan.”

  “Well, you wear Missy Maiden bras that give you that little bit extra’ when what you need is a whole lot extra!”

  “Animal!” Deanie yelled.

  “Vegetable!”

  “Nyaaah!”

  “Nyaaah!”

  They stuck their tongues out at each other with satisfaction. Each felt she had hit the target, summed up the other’s weaknesses. It was worth it—even having to hear her own faults—to at last expose the other’s.

  Suddenly Deanie straightened. She looked at the door. She had planned, when her father arrived with Delores, either to be reading something intelligent, smiling to herself—or writing a letter, smiling to herself. Now, unconsciously, her lips drew back in a half smile.

  “What is wrong?” Clara asked, irritation showing in her face and voice.

  Deanie nodded toward the doorway.

  “If you are trying to make me think that there’s somebody in the doorway,” Clara said, “if you are trying to make me think that Dear Delores and her cretin son have arrived and are—”

  Something in Deanie’s face made her break off. She turned.

  In the doorway stood a black-haired woman and, beside her, a boy who was obviously her son. The woman had the remains of a smile on her face. She lifted one hand and took off her dark glasses. The boy’s glasses were so thick, his eyes looked like reflections in a pool.

  “Well, did you all introduce yourselves?” The girls’ father appeared on the porch. He edged into the room and set the suitcases down. Then he looked around at the silent four, his smile growing puzzled.

  “Well?” He looked from one to the other. “Did you meet?”

  Delores came to her senses first. She stepped forward, really smiling now. “No, but I know that you must be Clara, and you’re Deanie.” She came forward and let one hand rest on each of the girls’ shoulders.

  “Yes,” said Deanie. Her face was as red as if she’d been in the sun all morning instead of practicing her cheerleading routines in the house.

  Clara drew in one long shuddering breath that ended in a whinny. “Yes,” she said.

  She and Deanie both began watching the floor intently. Clara felt as if she could never look up again.

  �
�John D,” Delores went on cheerfully, “these are Sam’s daughters, Deanie and Clara.” She tapped the girls’ shoulders lightly.

  “Yes, I’ve got them straight,” John D said from the doorway.

  There was an amused tone to his voice, and each girl felt he was adding to himself, “Deanie is the Vegetable and Clara is the Animal.”

  He stepped forward and stopped when his tennis shoes were in their line of vision. In the same amused voice he added, “They’re just as I imagined.”

  Clara shuddered. She felt Delores’s hands tighten, then give three quick comforting pats.

  Clara kept looking down at her feet. There was a flea on her ankle. Probably the same one, she thought. He had hopped all around the room after she’d thrown him away. “Where’d the Animal go? Where’s the Animal?” And now, finally, “Here she is,” and on he hopped.

  She was too miserable to scrape him off. The misery was pumping through her body now, like blood, going to every cell.

  “So what do you think, John D?” she heard her father say in his man-to-man voice.

  “Everything’s about as I expected,” she heard John D answer.

  “And,” Delores said, giving the girls a final hug, “we’re all going to be great friends.”

  DEANIE AND CLARA CAME over the dunes, rattling the sea oats as they walked. They slipped down the soft sand without speaking, crossed a strip of shells and shards as hard as pavement, and started up the beach.

  “Do you think they heard us?” Clara asked then, glancing at her sister.

  “Of course, they heard us,” Deanie snapped back. She yanked her bathing suit top up by the straps and pulled the bottom down in the back. She had been in such a hurry to get out of the house that she had not bothered to cover herself with her usual layer of tanning butter.

  “Maybe they didn’t,” Clara said. “Maybe—”

  “Did you see the looks on their faces?”

  “I had my head down most of the time.”

  “Well, I saw them and, believe me, they heard us.”