Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones

by Betsy Byars

  She screamed as the car went over the top again, screamed as it plunged—this time so steeply, Clara thought the car had actually come loose from its tracks and was hurtling through space.

  She closed her eyes and clapped her hands over her ears. The music was mixed with human screams now, both building to a climax.

  The car twisted, spiraled, dipped one last, sickening loop, and then straightened. It slid out into the light and stopped with a sure, mechanical click.

  Clara bobbed forward in her seat. She opened her eyes. She felt as strange as an explorer seeing things for the first time. This is called light and these are people and you have just been on something called a ride.

  The loudspeaker said, “Please step out of your car and walk through the door marked Reentry.”

  Clara tried to get to her feet, failed, and sat back in the space capsule. “Wasn’t that awful?” a woman asked cheerfully as she passed.

  “Yes,” Clara answered. She got slowly to her feet and leaned over the car like a wilted flower.

  “I’m going again as soon as I can get in line.” The woman leaned closer. “Are you all right, honey? You look funny.”

  Clara smiled weakly. “I always look this way,” she said. Stumbling slightly, she got out of the capsule and headed for Reentry.

  JOHN D WAS WATCHING for Clara from a fake rock in front of the Volcano. His eyes were on the Space Cyclone exit.

  John D felt that he alone knew the depth of Clara’s misery. He alone understood what had made her go on the Space Cyclone.

  He himself had spent the day moving from one event to another, watching mechanical apes square-dance, going under the sea in a pink submarine, riding through a huge sombrero where bulls sang, “Ay—yi—yi—yiiiii.” Each good time had only made him more miserable.

  When John D saw Clara come out, he straightened and stood up. She was the only person who didn’t have someone to hold on to. His eyes narrowed.

  All day long John D had felt as if he were in a pocket of misery as individual as a crater on the moon, and now abruptly she was in it too. He watched her with the wary eyes of an animal whose burrow has just been invaded.

  He usually considered people fools who made themselves more miserable than they had to be. Yet he felt a kinship with Clara. He himself had been hungry all day, but he had refused to eat anything.

  Of course, that was different, he went on. He had not eaten because he wanted his mother to know he wasn’t having a good time, and if she saw him wolfing down a hot fudge sundae, she would give him her See-I-Knew-You-Were-Having-Fun Look.

  Anyway, his hunger pangs had been for nothing. His Mom had not glanced his way all day, not even when the attendant pinched his hand in the Pink Submarine hatch.

  Suddenly he was ravenous. The sight of Clara leaning weakly against a Sylvester trash can made him feel strong and bursting with health.

  “I’m going to the refreshment stand,” he called cheerfully to his mother. She, Deanie, and Sam were walking toward him.

  “John D,” his mother called back, “we’re going to stop at a nice restaurant on the way home. Please don’t spoil your appetite.”

  He turned away with a careless wave and walked toward the refreshment stand.

  How funny life was, he thought. Now he had made his mother miserable—and without even trying. A two-part misery, he thought with a small smile, since he definitely would spoil his appetite and “pick at his food,” as she called it, in the nice restaurant.

  This will make up, partially, he told himself, for her laughter when I fell into the car. He lifted his pant leg and looked at his bruise. He saw with disappointment that it was gone.

  When I get back to the beach house, he decided, if I feel like it, I’ll touch up the spot with lipstick and eyebrow pencil—that makes a perfect bruise—and then I’ll put on shorts, come in the living room, and when she says, “What on earth happened to your leg?” I’ll reply quietly, “This is the injury that gave you such amusement this morning.”

  The waitress said, “What’ll you have?”

  He looked up at the pictures. “A Mount Everest, I believe,” he said. The picture showed a mountain of ice cream topped with chocolate sauce, cherries, pineapple, strawberries, nuts, and whipped cream. A small American flag was on top. His mother would flip. One of the reasons he loved junk food so much was because she hated it. She was always saying, “How can you eat that stuff? I can’t even stand to watch.”

  He paid for his Mount Everest and carried it in both hands, like a waiter with a flaming dessert. He glanced up in time to see his mother’s frown. That made him even hungrier.

  “Oh, can I have a bite of that?” Deanie asked, coming forward with a sly smile.

  He had not intended to share, but his Mount Everest was so big, there was no way he could hide it behind his back. He watched with obvious distaste as she scooped up whipped cream on one finger and licked it off. “Oh, that is sooooo good.”

  He tried to turn away, shielding his Mount Everest with his body. His spoon was in a plastic wrapper and he pulled at the plastic with his teeth.

  “And may I have just one piece of pineapple?” She laughed as her fingers poked the pineapple deeper into the ice cream. “Oh, I’m making a mess.”

  “Indeed,” he said coldly.

  “Hold it steady.”

  The Mount Everest was halfway up his arm now, the flag disappearing into the whipped cream. He struggled with the plastic around the spoon.

  “There. At last. Pineapple.” Deanie turned, holding the pineapple halfway to her lips. “Clara, you want a taste?”

  Clara shook her head.

  Mount Everest was melting. Chocolate syrup ran onto John D’s arm. He looked around with the desperation of a dog with a bone.

  “Come on, Clara. The whipped cream tastes just like melted marshmallows.”

  Clara, who was still leaning on the Sylvester trash can for support, shook her head quickly and looked away.

  “You want to split something? I could go for a hot fudge sundae.”

  Again Clara shook her head. Then she looked up at the sky, down at her feet, around at the crowd. She inhaled, swallowed, looked around again, and then, as the others watched, turned, gagged, and vomited behind Sylvester’s back.

  “Well,” John D said coldly to his mother, “you certainly don’t have to worry about the ice cream spoiling my appetite.”

  “Are you all right, Clara?” his mother called.

  John D stuck his spoon in the melted peak of Mount Everest and let the whole mountain slide into the nearest trash can. Then he wiped his hands on his shirt.

  “Can we leave now?” he asked in the same cold voice.

  “ARE YOU SITTING OUT here all by yourself for a reason?” Delores asked.

  Clara’s head jerked up. She had been sitting on the steps, watching the ocean and wishing she were at home. “No, no reason,” she said quickly. “I’m just sitting here watching the waves.” She had come out here to get away from everybody in the house but she knew not to say that.

  “The ocean’s so beautiful at night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment they both watched the beach. The foam-edged waves formed a white line along the shore. The even breaking of the waves made the kind of sound that lulls people to sleep.

  Delores walked down three steps and sat beside Clara.

  “You don’t like to play Charades, do you?” Delores said.

  “No.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  They had just finished a short game of Charades in which Clara had not guessed a single syllable. She had never cared much for pantomime, and the quickness required for Charades—the signals, the happy cries—“Title … TV show … three words … first syllable …” and the final triumphant “Sha Na Na!” Tonight it had seemed more like a bad dream than a game.

  “I don’t either usually,” Delores went on. “It’s too much like life, with everybody having trouble communicat
ing. But—I don’t know—here at the beach everything seems more fun, don’t you think?” She hugged her knees and waited.

  Clara could feel Delores looking at her. “I guess,” she said. She turned her head away, casually, up the beach where the moon hung full and white over the sea.

  “You aren’t having a very good time, are you, Clara.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I know you didn’t have fun at the amusement park yesterday.”

  “I like to swim,” Clara said.

  “Yes, you do seem to enjoy the ocean.”

  There was another awkward silence. Clara waited for Delores to go back into the house. Instead she heard Delores say, “I don’t think John D’s having a good time either.”

  Clara said “Oh” without interest.

  “He doesn’t make friends easily.”

  I bet, Clara thought. She kept looking at the moon. Anyway, who does make friends easily? Her eyes narrowed slightly, blurring the round moon.

  What did adults expect? she wondered. They throw perfectly strange kids together and can’t understand it when these perfectly strange kids don’t become instant friends. Does anyone realize, she went on, that it has taken me my entire lifetime to find—in all the hundreds and hundreds of people in my school—two friends? Two!

  “I wish you and John D could become friends,” Delores went on. “I think you have a lot in common.”

  Clara turned and looked at Delores, her eyes wide open with surprise.

  “I do think so. You’re both serious and sensitive and have good minds. Your father’s told me about your making Honor Society, and he’s showed me some of your stories and poems.”

  Clara gasped. She turned away, no longer pretending to be looking at the moon or the shore. She began breathing through her mouth. Her body had begun to need more air than her nose could inhale.

  Delores said quickly, “I hope you don’t mind your father sharing your stories with me. He’s very proud of you.

  Clara managed to say “No.” She was as short of breath as if she had run a mile.

  Clara had shared her writing with exactly four people in her life—her mother; her father; her best friend, Ellen, who wanted to be a writer; and her other friend, Jennifer, who was going to be an actress.

  It was one of the few things Clara was particular about, private about. She did not let Deanie read her things—not that Deanie would want to—or even Mr. Fratiana, her English teacher, who kept telling her she ought to concentrate on her writing. She felt betrayed, deprived of something far more permanent than enough evening air.

  The door opened behind them. “I’m trying to get someone to take a walk with me,” her father said. “Deanie’s washing her hair. John D’s in his room. How about you two?”

  “We’d love to. Come on, Clara.” Delores got to her feet. “I love the beach at night.” She laughed. “I’d love it in the daytime, too, if it weren’t for all that sunshine.”

  Clara said, “I’m tired. I swam all afternoon and I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Just a short walk. Come on.”

  Clara got to her feet, and Delores’s arm went around her shoulders companionably. They went down the steps like that, with Clara’s father behind them. As they started over the dunes her father moved on the other side of Clara so that she was between them.

  She clomped along the beach, feeling like a prisoner between guards. They talked over her head, laughed, and included her with an occasional, “Don’t you think so, Clara?” And she answered with a noncommittal “I guess.”

  “I’m going back,” she said suddenly, pulling away.

  “Clara,” her father pleaded. “Clarrie,” his baby name for her.

  “I’m tired,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Let’s all go back,” Delores said quickly. “Let’s get blankets and lie out on the beach and pretend we know something about the stars.”

  Her father laughed. “I’m good at that. I spent my high-school dating years pointing out strange stars to girls. The only time my dates would sit close to me was for something scientific.”

  “I don’t believe that, Sam. I’ve seen pictures of you in high school.”

  “It’s true. I dreaded cloudy nights—whew, I’d just sit there with my palms getting sweaty.”

  “I cannot picture it. Pretend I’m—Oh, name me somebody you dated.”

  “Jo Ann Goodman.”

  “That name came awfully quickly. All right, pretend I’m Jo Ann Goodman and we’re …”

  Neither her father nor Delores noticed when Clara left them and went up to the house.

  THE GULLS WERE SCREAMING as Deanie and Clara came over the dunes, soaring evenly in the steady breeze that blew, this afternoon, from the north. Beyond them the pelicans crash-dived into the sea, scooped up fish, and flew away.

  “Look how tan I’m getting,” Deanie said. “Wait a minute till I take my rings off. There.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Clara could see her sister’s shiny, buttered arms waving like a hula girl’s. She kept her face turned toward the sea.

  “I just hope I don’t peel.” She put her rings back on and stared with a pleased smile at her tan fingers.

  Clara stomped through the marsh grass, stepped over a sign that forbade anyone to pick it, and moved onto the warm soft sand of the dunes. She was carrying an inflated air mattress under one arm.

  Ahead the sea beckoned. The tide was going out. The waves lapped backward like a cat’s tongue. There was a breeze, and the sea grass traced circles in the wind.

  “Girls, don’t go out too far,” Delores called from the door of the beach house.

  “We won’t, Mommie,” Deanie said to Clara in the tiny voice of a four-year-old.

  “Girls, did you hear me?” Delores called louder, moving onto the steps.

  The girls paused at the edge of the dunes. Behind them the cabbage palms and scrub pines cast a short shadow. It was three o’clock.

  Deanie smiled and waved. “We heard,” she called. “We won’t.”

  As they started walking Deanie’s smile faded. “I’m getting so tired of her. How many pairs of designer jeans does she have?”

  “Many.”

  “And did you watch her last night when we were playing Charades?”

  Clara shook her head. The float trailed in the soft sand behind her.

  “Well, the whole time I was acting out Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dear Delores was having close encounters of her own. She was leaning over Dad and breathing on him. She acts like Wanda Jeanine Raye in my high school.”

  “I am so stupid,” Clara said suddenly.

  Deanie looked at her in surprise. “What brought that on?

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re not stupid. You make good grades.”

  “Grades,” Clara said in the same flat voice.

  “Listen, I finally figured it out. This may make you feel better. Everyone in the world is stupid. The Queen of England is stupid. Walter Cronkite is stupid. The Pope is stupid. The only difference is that they are all stupid less of the time than other people. I’m not good at percents but, say, Walter Cronkite is probably stupid five percent of the time. We are probably stupid fifteen percent of the time.”

  “A hundred percent is more like it for me.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Depress me. It makes me frown, and then I don’t tan in my wrinkles.”

  “I—”

  “Anyway, I’ve seen stars, stars come on talk shows and be more stupid than we’d ever be. I saw Bonnie Franklin talk to Dinah Shore about cold sores, and cold sores have to be the most stupid thing there is.”

  “I’m going swimming,” Clara said abruptly. She began to run toward the water. She hopped on one foot as she stepped on a sharp shell and then ran again.

  “Remember, don’t go out too far!” Deanie called. One of her main pleasures these days was imitating Delores. She had it down
perfectly. “Clara, did you hear your new mommie?”

  She broke off when there was no acknowledgment of her imitation. She stood watching Clara run through the shallow waves.

  Then, with a sigh, she began turning around slowly, as if she were on a spit, so that all sides of her body would get an even tan. With her arms out to her sides, she was like a figure on a music box.

  Clara jumped over the first wave, lifted the float higher, waded between waves, turned sideways as the next wave broke over her. She felt pleasure in struggling with the waves, her first pleasure of the day. It was as if she were getting over a barrier, away from something, and on to something new at the same time.

  The water deepened. Clara felt herself step down a sandy slope. Every day the ocean changed. Every day was different. Sand swirled around her ankles.

  A wave struck the side of her head. She tasted salt, and shook her head to get the water out of her ear. Then the wave rippled past, pulling at the float, rolling over itself onto the shore.

  Clara felt for a secure bottom with her feet. The current was tugging at her ankles. Then a gentle wave came, lifted her, put her back down.

  Another wave was coming. Clara faced it. Lots of foam and power in this one, she thought. With renewed energy, Clara got set to rise above it.

  JOHN D WAS SITTING on the porch in a rocking chair, writing intently in his brown spiral notebook. He glanced up to make sure the girls were really at the beach and not sneaking back to the house to catch him at his work.

  He relaxed. He had the house to himself now. His mom and Sam had left for the fish market.

  “I’m going to make my famous Shrimp Mornay,” his mother had announced as they were leaving.

  He had stared at her. He had never heard of such a dish. He wondered if she had some recipes hidden in her suitcase. He had spent a few pleasant moments imagining his mom with the recipe hidden in her palm, like somebody cheating on a test, casually tossing together her creation.

  Maybe his mom did know how to make Shrimp whatever. After all she was perfect at everything else—the perfect newspaper columnist, the perfect mother. He smiled. The proof of that was that he had turned out to be a perfect child.