“If I told them, they’d think I was crazy or something,” I said. “They’d think I was a kook. Maybe I’ll tell them. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
Then Ms. Govoni cracked a silly joke that broke both of us up. We laughed so much, Rosie and Mack came running, wanting to know what was so funny.
“Time to take Grace home, kids. It’s later than I thought.”
The children groaned, knowing they’d blown it. “If only you’d stayed quiet,” Mack said, “they would’ve forgotten about us, Rosie.”
They raced down the stairs ahead of us, shouting with glee. When you’re little, it’s easy to be happy, I thought.
We followed more sedately, Ms. Govoni and I.
“You can make something wonderful of yourself, Grace,” she told me. “You have great potential. The important thing is to have faith in yourself.”
“I want to kiss Grace good-bye.” Rosie’s wiry little arms went around my neck from the backseat. “I love you, Grace,” Rosie said.
“You just met her,” Mack said in a gruff voice. “You can’t love somebody you just met.”
“Yes I can. Can’t I, Mommy?”
“Absolutely,” Ms. Govoni said. “That’s known as love at first sight.”
Later, I lay awake, thinking about things. Dirk, Ashley, Ms. Govoni, Mack, Rosie. Love at first sight. Monday I love you.
Now if only I had faith in myself.
19
Lucy and I sat on her bed, planning her birthday party. Lucy’s bedroom looked like a bedroom in a magazine—all pink and white, billowing organdy. It was a dream bedroom, and even now, if I close my eyes, I can see the two of us sitting on Lucy’s white organdy spread.
“We’re going to have scads of balloons,” said Lucy, “and a clown.”
“A live clown?” I asked, not willing to show how deeply this impressed me.
“Well, you certainly don’t think we’re having a dead one, do you?” Lucy’s scorn was monumental and shamed me into silence.
“My mother’s fixing creamed chicken in those little patty shells you get at the bakery.” Lucy licked her lips and rearranged the mounds of little pillows piled on her bed. What did she do with them at night, I wondered, when she went to sleep?
“And peas, of course. And the cake’s going to be chocolate with chocolate frosting and chocolate-chip ice cream.”
I was stunned, never having heard of, much less gone to, such a party. The only birthday parties I knew were made up of one or two guests, pale and silent and ill at ease, children whose mothers were acquaintances, even, perhaps, customers, of my mother.
“That sounds nice,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement.
“And little baskets of candy, and of course”—Lucy’s eyes sought mine and I could see even she was thrilled by this tidbit—“everyone gets a favor. My mother says it’s not nice for just the hostess to get presents. She says everyone should go home with a little something, just to show they’ve been to a party. She says when she was a girl in Memphis, they had a silver tea service on the sideboard, and whenever they gave a party, the servants polished the tea service so’s you could see your face in it for weeks afterward.”
As if on cue, Lucy’s mother appeared in the doorway and said, “Well, darling, and who’s today’s little visitor?” as if they had a constant stream. Even before I stood up, because she was an older person and I’d been taught to stand as a mark of respect, I knew Lucy’s mother had dismissed me from her thoughts. Her pale, liquid eyes took me in as Lucy said, “This is Grace Schmitt, Mother.”
“Ah,” sighed Lucy’s mother, “Grace Schmitt. And where do you live, Grace?”
I told her, and with a narrow hand she brushed her forehead as if wiping away cobwebs. It was not an address that spoke of pink-and-white bedrooms, nor was it an address that drew anyone’s approval. I had never lived at such an address and probably never would.
“Lucy, my love, it’s time for the dentist.”
Lucy bounced off the organdy spread, and I knew it was time for me to say good-bye.
“I’ll see you,” I said, and Lucy’s mother straightened Lucy’s collar and whispered something into her ear. I had always been taught it was impolite to whisper.
“Good-bye,” I said as they got into their car. “Goodbye, Lucy, I can hardly wait,” I said. They drove off, leaving me on the sidewalk. I thought I saw Lucy’s hand waving to me from the car window, but I couldn’t be sure.
I went home and told my mother I had to have a new dress for Lucy’s party. She rummaged through the closet and brought forth one of her dresses, which she held against me and said she believed it could be cut down to fit me. Close to tears, I said no, it would never, never fit me. No matter what was done to it.
By great good fortune, next day a local store advertised in the paper a half-off sale on girls’ dresses. We hurried on down, and I wound up with a nice, if uninteresting, yellow dress. Yellow wasn’t my color, but what was?
My father polished my patent-leather shoes with Vaseline until they shone. I could see my face in them almost as clearly as Lucy’s mother could see hers in the silver tea service on the sideboard. I took a bath every day in anticipation of Lucy’s party.
My mother gave me a shampoo and a vinegar rinse and would’ve gladly removed any unwanted hair if I’d had any. The whole family sat back and waited for the invitation to arrive.
“It will come by mail,” my mother announced. “If they’re having creamed chicken and all that, they’ll mail those invitations. You can be sure of that.”
I saw Lucy every day at school. She didn’t mention the party. But I heard her as she reeled off the details to a crowd of eager listeners. Well, after all, I told myself somewhat smugly, I’d heard them first. I knew all about the clown and the favors. As well as the chocolate-chip ice cream. I’d also been the first to sit on Lucy’s white organdy spread. You can’t have everything.
Days passed. Finally, unable to stand the suspense any longer, I asked Lucy what day the party was to be. What time. I was going out to buy the present that very afternoon, I told her.
“Oh,” said Lucy, putting her hand to her mouth, widening her eyes in perplexity, “I’m not inviting you.”
I stood very still, afraid if I moved, I’d overflow, like a jug of water that’s filled too full. I put out my hand and said, “But you told me I was. You said, you told me about everything. The clown. Why did you tell me? I have a new dress, even. I thought I …”
Lucy stamped her foot. I had made her angry. “Oh no,” she said in a pitying tone. “I never said you were invited. We can only fit in ten. My cousins are coming just for my party. There isn’t room. I did not say you were invited. You just thought you were.”
And she spun on her heel and left me there. I could barely move, surrounded as I was by ruined pride and hopes and dreams. I don’t remember the rest of that day. But I do remember how my mother and father looked when I told them it had all been a mistake. Their faces crumpled, as if they’d been made of some soft stuff that came apart at a touch.
“She has to have her cousins, you see,” I announced in a feeble attempt at not caring. “They only have room for ten. Her cousins are coming all that way just for the party.”
I escaped then, ran into my room and slammed shut the door.
For once, my mother didn’t come tapping, asking me what was wrong.
For once, she knew.
The thing that nagged at me, after the pain had gone down a little, was: What were the favors?
I would never know.
20
I’ve decided two things: One, I’m not having any breast operation. Two, I’m not ratting on Dirk. I can’t. He might be William, my first real friend. I’ll probably never know for sure. It’s better that way. I’d hate to think William had turned to a life of crime. And if it really was Dirk and he had spared my life for some unknown reason, I can imagine him the way he was when he kissed me. It’s very complicated. I still do
n’t have it sorted out in my head. Maybe I never will.
I played hooky on and off after everything had happened. I felt too frail for any kind of encounter with anyone. I was tempted to play sick, stay in bed, but I knew if I did, I might never get up.
It turned out all right. I acted as normal as I could. Nobody said anything to me. I saw Ashley from a distance. She steered clear of me.
It’s got so I sit for Rosie and Mack every Saturday. Four straight Saturdays now I’ve sat for them. We do exercises on the living-room rug. Ms. Govoni believes you’re never too young to keep the bod in shape. She has them, and me, doing sit-ups, stretch exercises, leg lifts—all that kind of stuff. At first I was self-conscious in front of the kids, but they acted as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world for the three of us to be out flat on the floor, so now it’s fun.
Ms. Govoni’s taking a psychology course at the community college. She plans on getting a degree in child psychology. “Children need help,” she told me, “and I’d like to be able to give it to them.” She doesn’t want to be a gym teacher all her life, she said. “I’ll probably have to take out a bank loan to see me through. I don’t like to borrow money, but if I do, I want to be sure it’s for a good reason. I guess education’s as good a reason as any.”
It’s also got so that when Walter (Croc) comes to deliver the paper every Saturday, he winds up hanging around for a while, shooting the breeze with me and the kids, even peering into the refrigerator now and then to see what’s what. He never takes anything though. He knows better.
When I pay him the money Ms. Govoni leaves, it’s amazing the way he just eases himself into a sitting position while still standing, bends his knees just so and backs up to the couch gradually until, next thing I know, he’s sitting there, smiling around the room, the uninvited and expectant guest. I can’t remember ever asking him to sit, but there he is, settling in for a good chat.
“You ever try octopus?” he asks, letting his ropey old hands hang down between his knees, studying them like there’s a message written on them.
“No,” I tell him, thinking that’s a funny way to start a conversation, “I never did.”
Rosie and Mack, who are never far away, come bounding out from wherever they’re hiding, shouting, “Oh yes, oh yes, octopus is very delicious!” Then Rosie rubs her stomach and proclaims, “Octopus is very yummy and tasty,” as if she’s heard it described on TV that way. As if octopus is a cereal with sugar coating.
Walter pauses, scowling, tapping a long finger against the side of his head.
“How about raw hamburger?” he says slyly.
“Raw hamburger! Whoever heard of eating raw hamburger?” the kids cry, jumping around like fleas on a stray dog. He waits until they calm down before he opens his eyes wide and says, “With a raw egg on top?”
Well, that gets them. They zoom around, hands clapped over their mouths to hold back possible vomiting. They love it, they love Walter. Ms. Govoni says they spend time during the week thinking up weird foods to pull on him. When he shows up, they shout, “Cauliflower!” which they find outrageous. Or “Brussels sprouts!” which I find outrageous, and he makes a big deal out of being astonished, rolling his eyes and clutching himself by the throat, making gagging sounds, which sends them off into more gales of laughter.
I made the mistake of telling Estelle about Walter being Ms. Govoni’s paperboy, and the end of her nose started to twitch.
“He’s a complete dinosaur,” she said. “A positive troglodyte.” All of a sudden, Estelle’s into natural history and conservation. She’s also thinking of taking Latin or Greek next year if she can find any around. Ever since she totaled her mother’s car, Estelle’s a different person. She never misses a Sunday at church, for instance, and she’s also into culture. Instead of listening to Tina Turner or Billy Joel, now she tunes in to Luciano Pavarotti. It’s amazing what a brush with the grim reaper can do.
At first, Estelle’s mother was so overjoyed that Estelle didn’t have so much as a scratch on her, she kept hugging and kissing her and thanking God he’d spared her baby. Then, after a few days, the euphoria wore off and Estelle’s mother got so mad about her totaled car, which she hadn’t even finished paying for, that Estelle said her life wasn’t worth a plugged nickel and she was thinking about leaving home. She asked if she could come and live with us, but my mother said one teenager was enough. For once, I agreed with my mother. When I tried to imagine Estelle and me sharing my room, Estelle’s bristly hairbrush decorating my bureau, my closet filled with her clothes, never mind all Estelle’s beauty preparations in the bathroom, I got goose bumps.
“He’s not so bad.” I defended Walter. “Once you get to know him.”
“I have no intention of ever getting to know him,” Estelle said in her huffy way.
I don’t think I ever exchanged a word with Walter before I went to Ms. Govoni’s to sit with the kids. It’s strange, but I sort of like him. I feel sorry for him. He has a sallow complexion, like Mary in The Secret Garden, and when he takes his glasses off, I noticed, he has lavender marks like bruises under his eyes. He said this came from wearing glasses all the time, which he has to do on account of he’s blind as a bat without them. I suppose that’s possible, although I’ve never heard that wearing glasses causes lavender marks under the eyes.
This week it was teeming rain on Saturday when Ms. Govoni came to pick me up.
“Here’s the money for the paper,” she said. “Although maybe Walter won’t show on a day like this.”
“Oh, he’ll come, all right,” I said. “You can count on him.”
Sure enough, there he was. On the dot.
“You want me to leave this outside?” He folded his enormous black umbrella and held it out to me.
“For Pete’s sake,” I said, “don’t bring it in. It’d cause a flood in here. Just leave it.” He was probably the only paperboy in town who carried a large umbrella when it rained, I thought. Trust Walter. Why didn’t he use a tarp to cover himself? Boys didn’t use umbrellas.
“Hey.” That was his usual greeting. Hey. He didn’t have on a raincoat even. Or boots.
“I thought you might skip the paper today,” I said. “Considering the weather.”
“Neither snow nor rain nor sleet shall prevent me from prompt delivery,” he said.
“That’s the U.S. mail that says that,” I told him. We heard scuffling in the bedroom. Rosie and Mack were getting ready for their attack.
“Let me, let me,” I heard them whispering.
Mack popped out and shouted, “Brains!” and Rosie, wrapped in something that looked like an old curtain, opened her mouth to add her bit, then closed it and said, “I forgot. What was I going to say, Mack?” and the two of them went back to talk it over.
Walter bent his knees and eased himself over to the couch, preparing to sit.
“I see where they caught that guy,” he said, landing, making a loud plop.
“What guy?” I said, coldness coming over me.
“The guy they’ve been looking for. The one they offered the reward for. Some lady over in Crawford County said she spied him hiding out in a vacant house. The cops closed in. They took him off to jail, though he says he never did anything to anybody. There’s a picture of him on the front page.”
And expertly, like the seasoned newspaperman he was, Walter flipped open the paper. The face staring out was not a face I knew.
“That’s not the one,” I said, almost grinning.
“How do you know?” Walter asked in surprise.
“I just don’t think that’s the one,” I said, blushing.
“Who knows?” Then, gazing glumly out at the streaming windows, he said, “Wanna go out?”
“Now why would anyone want to go out on a day like this?” I said.
He mumbled something, and I said, “What? I can’t hear you. You’re mumbling.”
“I said, ‘Wanna go out,’” he repeated, and when I looked at him, I tried to rea
d his somber expression. “With me, I mean.”
I laughed. It was nerves, but I did laugh. It just slipped out, the way sometimes you laugh when you don’t know what else to do. I had never learned the secret of laughing at the right moment. And maybe I never would.
“You’re kidding,” I said. The minute I said it I was sorry. And ashamed. How tactless and rude of me. He was serious and I should’ve known it.
He bobbed his head at me and smiled weakly. In a flash, I recognized the hurt on his face, knew it for what it was. Lord knows I should’ve recognized it. I’d been there plenty of times myself. It was the look of someone who’s been rejected and who knows it.
Oh, but I felt bad. How stupid can you be? I asked myself. How terrible I’d learned nothing from my considerable experience with cruelty, I thought. But not until after, after he’d gone.
“You serious?” I said, to make amends.
But he only looked at his hands and remained silent.
“Artichoke!” screamed Rosie, popping out, still in her draperies. Mack was behind her, giggling.
“Oooooh.” Walter held his stomach and groaned. “Ooooooh,” he said. I had to admire his courage, his timing. I couldn’t have done it after a rejection like that, I knew.
“Why’d you have to go and say that word?” he demanded of Rosie and Mack. “Now if you’d gone and said ‘asparagus,’ well, it’d be different. But artichoke, ooooohhhh.”
Rosie and Mack fell on the floor and rolled about, clutching their stomachs with great joy.
“Sure,” I said when the children had taken themselves off to plan future weird words to try out on him, “I’ll go out with you.” Was that, I wondered, the proper way to say it? Maybe I should’ve said, “I’d love to go out with you,” or better still, “I’ll have to ask my mother.”
Walter got up and opened the door, looking for his umbrella.
“Okay,” he said, and sloshed off into the rain under its gigantic cover. Even from the back he looked mournful.
Did he mean tomorrow, I wondered, or next month? And would we go Dutch or was he going to treat me?
Monday I Love You Page 11
