by Richard Peck
One afternoon when I was making my solitary way home from school, I heard a soft whir behind me and the sound of leaves being mashed in the gutter. A Pope-Detroit Electric brougham glided up. Miss Gertrude Dabney was erect at its tiller. She had her machine under control that day and rolled to a smooth stop.
There had been so much excitement at our first meeting that I hadn’t taken in all of Miss Dabney. She had a reputation as the town character and lived up to it. Everything about her was unlike everybody else. They called her a recluse, which is something like a hermit. However, my notion of a hermit is not somebody who motors around town, running down small boys.
She lowered the side window by means of a strap and thrust her head out. Her motoring veil was pinned around a gray velvet toque that rose up from her head, giving her unnecessary height. From over one ear an egret feather rose even higher and curled in the air. She stared filmily at me through her veil. “Do you like my hat? I had it copied from a picture of Queen Mary.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, ma’am. I like your hat right well.” This was not the first lie of my life, nor the last.
“I am only making conversation,” Miss Dabney went on, “because I am in confusion. Are you or are you not the child who has the Second Sight? At a distance I thought so. Up close, I wonder.”
This was understandable. I couldn’t wear my Select Dry Goods outfit daily without wearing it out. So I only added parts of it to perk my other clothes. That day I had on the new coat with the bone buttons over an old striped flannel skirt and my regular black stockings. My hair was tied back with string. It was more disguise than outfit.
“I am the same.”
“Ah, yes, I was quite sure. And your name is Hortense Miller?”
I began to see how Miss Dabney operated. She didn’t like asking a straightforward question, but she liked a straightforward answer. “No, ma’am, my name’s Blossom Culp, same as it was the other day.”
“Are you sassy?” she inquired with her eyebrows high.
“No, ma’am.”
“Witty, then. Would you like to come to tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I knew that in the better houses tea was served with cakes. And since I was starved, I was ready to scramble right up into the Pope-Detroit.
“Tomorrow at four then,” she said, drawing her head in like a turtle. But she stuck it out again at once. “And you may bring a young friend. Children alone always feel outnumbered.” Then the side window whistled up, and the Pope-Detroit slid soundlessly away. I watched it weave out onto the crown of the road on its motorcycle wheels and disappear into bonfire smoke.
My mind took a small leap forward and embraced Alexander Armsworth. As I’ve said before, a person does not like to be picked up and then dropped. It was high time me and him had words.
5
EVERY MORNING at school just before the Pledge of Allegiance we have an inspection. Miss Spaulding takes volunteers, and I’d prepared myself that next day to be one.
“Who will serve as monitor for row five?” she sang out, and up shot my hand. “Very well, Blossom, front and center.” I had on my complete new outfit and my plaid ribbon. In the cloakroom hung my tam-o’-shanter. I was ready to monitor and to take tea with Miss Dabney. I was also ready for Alexander Armsworth.
“Hands out for inspection, palms and backs.” Miss Spaulding looked me up and down. “My, you have been thorough,” she said in a lower voice. “You have nearly done some violence to those cuticles. Handkerchief?”
I whipped a clean one out of my shirtwaist front, folded with the ragged parts tucked in. “Very well, Blossom, work your row.”
Letty was not in my row, and I was sorry about that. The mortification of being inspected by me would have finished her off. There was a hole in the row where Les Dawson once sat, and behind was Alexander, trying not to notice me. “Handkerchief?”
He nodded.
“Well, let’s see it,” I said, twitching my shoulders like Letty.
He leaned forward in slow motion and drew out a handkerchief from his hip pocket.
“Comb?”
He nodded.
“Well, let’s have a look at that too. I have a job to do, you know, Alexander.” It like to drive him wild. His brows beetled, and he slapped a comb on the desk. “Hands, palms then backs.”
I reached out and just touched his fingers. “Well, they look so-so to me.” In truth they were scrubbed pink and smelled of Lewis Lye Soap. They jittered with anger.
“Move on, Blossom,” he whispered, “or I’ll black your eye.”
“Meet me behind the ash pit at recess, or I’ll tell Miss Spaulding where you was Halloween night, and I’ll add to the story,” I whispered back. Oh, I was ready for Alexander. My plans were laid. I moved on for a look at Harriet Hochhuth’s hanky.
* * *
He made me wait behind the ash pit till recess was half over. I knew he would. He’s broke out with pride. But he ambled up finally with his hands in his hip pockets, as if just happening by. “Don’t think for a minute,” he began, “that I didn’t know it was you in Old Man Leverette’s privy tricked out as a ghost. I was not fooled, though I lost my footing and fell.”
“‘Oh, a haunt! Oh, I am cursed!’” I quoted to remind him of what he’d said at the time.
“And now I hear tell you’re going around saying you have the Gift and Second Sight and like as not can cure warts with the touch of your hand. You are busier than a one-armed paperhanger these days, Blossom. And all I want to know is, what business do you think you have with me?”
“If you would hush for one minute, you’d hear,” I replied with some dignity.
“Well, hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”
“You have the same day as anybody else. And I’d think you could figure out the business me and you have.” I waited while he played dumb and then continued. “Miss Spaulding grilled me good about that gang of yours doing all that Halloween mischief. You know she works hand in glove with the law. She’d as soon turn your name in down at the sheriff’s as look at you. And even if she didn’t, she’d whup the tar out of you for running with Les Dawson and them. She doesn’t know you’re falling in with that low-life bunch. And you notice she has throwed Les out of school already.”
“He’s better off,” Alexander replied. “I wish I was out of this school.”
“And what would your folks do to you if you got expelled?” I inquired. Alexander began to wilt. “You’re one lucky kid,” I went on, “to have a friend like me to save your good name. Hot tongs would not get me to rat on you. But of course I could.”
“Unless,” said Alexander.
“What do you mean by unless?” I asked.
“Unless I do something you want me to do.” Alexander was picking up clinkers and throwing them against the schoolhouse wall, hard. Boys are always throwing things. It soothes their nerves. “You’re nothing but a common blackmailer, Blossom. There’s nothing too low for you to try.”
“Well, I wouldn’t stoop to pushing over privies,” I replied. “I ain’t sunk that low.”
“If you keep harping about Halloween,” Alexander warned, “I’ll leave you where you stand and take my chances.” So I saw I’d pushed him about far enough and went on to play my last card.
“What I want you to do is purely social. Miss Gertrude Dabney is having me to tea this afternoon and said I should bring a friend. I choose you.”
“Choose again,” said Alexander. “I don’t go to tea parties.”
“You’ll go to this one.”
“It’s common knowledge that Miss Dabney is crazy as a coot.”
“That may be,” I said, “but she’s having us to tea. There’ll probably be cakes and cookies.”
“You’re just trying to get me alone,” said Alexander, who can be very stuck on himself sometimes. “Miss Dabney doesn’t know you from Adam’s off ox.”
“She knows me all right. A
nd you know how. My Second Sight revealed how her auto run Newton Shambaugh down. That’s common knowledge too. And if knowledge is common enough, even you hear it.”
“And what if I won’t go?” He stubbed at the ground with the toe of a boot.
“Then I turn you straight in to the principal. See if I don’t.”
“And I thought we were friends,” he mumbled, harking back to an earlier time he’d planned to forget.
“We are. And Miss Dabney said to bring a friend.”
Alexander gave this deep thought. Then as the bell rang, he said, “On two conditions. One: that we only stay a couple minutes. And two: that we don’t have any talk about supernatural powers. I’ve put all that behind me. It only gets a person into trouble. And I don’t want to hear any of your lies about powers of your own. Miss Dabney is weird enough without you adding to it.”
“Anything you say, Alexander,” I simpered, and skipped off.
But he yelled after me, “I’m not walking you to Miss Dabney’s. I’ll meet you in front of her house!”
“Four o’clock sharp!” I sang out over my shoulder.
* * *
No one passing Miss Dabney’s house fails to mention her craziness, even though many of these people have little to go on. Besides, I’ve noticed that only a thin line divides the insane from the rest of the population.
Alexander joined me on the inside of Miss Dabney’s neglected hedge, and we waded together through the leaves on the front walk. As we were going to a tea, I wore my tam-o’-shanter, though the band leaves a lasting groove across my forehead. I tried to take Alexander’s arm, but it hung at his side, stiff as if broken.
Dead ferns drooped from hanging pots along the porch, and the railings were splintered. I rang the bell. Miss Dabney’s shadow already loomed over us beyond the colored glass in the door. Alexander shuddered, and the door opened.
She towered over us like a silo. I believe Miss Dabney’s the tallest woman I’ve ever seen. She stared down at us with alarm, like we’d come to take her away.
“I’m Blossom Culp,” I reminded her, throwing my head well back, “and this here is Alexander Armsworth.”
“Well, of course you are,” said Miss Dabney, peering down her long nose.
As she was standing her ground, I said, “We’re here for tea.”
“I should only hope,” she said, “as it is already set out.” At that she gave way and walked off down a dim hallway past a cobwebbed grandfather’s clock. There was a smell of wood rot and a biting chill to the place.
“You’ll end up this way if you don’t stop being so peculiar,” Alexander muttered in my ear as we followed behind.
Every word Miss Dabney spoke confirmed Alexander in the notion that she was far gone in the head, but I caught a sparkle of mockery in her sharp eyes that spoke of sanity to me. I thought she might even have some clever secret plan up her long sleeve that had nothing to do with tea. She did.
We followed her trailing skirts into a back parlor where all the shutters were drawn, giving it a jailhouse effect. There were a dozen chairs, and Alexander picked one well away from me. He flopped down and commenced to pick at the crocheted doilies on his chair arms.
The room was so dark I could only see the glint of the silver teapot on a table before Miss Dabney. She was so tall and her sofa was so low that she nearly had to look at us through her knees. She wore a tea gown of old rose with bishop’s sleeves. It showed a good deal of her neck and withered bosom, caked with Coty powder.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw the room was busy with ferns, bamboo stands, and marble busts. I was glad to see plates of iced bakery cakes beside the teapot. Just above Miss Dabney’s head hung two large oval portraits in thick gilt frames. They were of a man and a woman, hand tinted, who looked so stiff I mistook them for kin of Miss Dabney. The man had a small pointed beard and wore a uniform heavy with gold braid. The woman was hard-faced, with pearls that wound round and round above a solid bust. She appeared to have a diamond crown on her head.
Alexander rolled his eyes at these portraits as if it was just like Miss Dabney’s relations to go around in crowns and uniforms they weren’t entitled to.
“I keep this room as cool as possible,” Miss Dabney mentioned, making no move to the tea. “We live in a hot country, tropical by some standards, and I suffer from the heat.” Alexander shot me a grim look. It was a nippy November day outside and freezing within. “All my tastes are English,” Miss Dabney explained.
As there was nothing to say to that, she fixed on Alexander. “If you are the Armsworth boy, your family lives in that very large house on Pine Street. The one with the barn where you—”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alexander interrupted.
“—discovered the ghost,” finished Miss Dabney.
“Yes, ma’am. But I only knew that one ghost to speak to. Kind of like a fluke. And I no longer have any powers. I’d sooner not talk about the supernatural anyhow.” Alexander sulked. “It’s not natural.”
“It is curious etiquette to announce what you will not discuss at a tea,” Miss Dabney said. “But of course there are many topics we can touch on. Your sister is married to that bright young newspaperman, I believe?”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “Lucille married Lowell Seaforth here a while back.”
“And now she’s in the family way,” I blurted out suddenly, “with a little stranger due late next spring.”
Alexander’s face colored up something alarming, and Miss Dabney’s eyebrows shot high. “Well, I don’t know if children discussing such topics at a tea is quite etiquette either,” she said, somewhat baffled.
“Listen, Blossom!” Alexander yelled at me, “don’t tell lies about Lucille just to make yourself interesting. She isn’t in the family way, or she’d have told us. Anyway, how could you—”
We all three of us seemed to know without me admitting anything. I wouldn’t have any way of knowing except that as I sat in Miss Dabney’s parlor, I had a sudden flash of my Second Sight. Not even thunder and lightning this time or any need to concentrate. When Miss Dabney referred to Alexander’s big sister, my entire mind switched to Dr. Beasley’s office downtown. He was sitting there in his white coat, with the metal reflector on his head. Lucille was fully dressed but blushing.
And Dr. Beasley was saying at that very moment, “Yes, yes, Mrs. Seaforth, a little stranger in late May, no question about it. And we must keep a sharp eye on the little mother-to-be and see that she stays in tiptop shape.” All this I saw and heard as if I’d been there instead of where I was. Alexander’s face was near purple with rage and shame.
I began to understand why he denied the Gift to himself. Seeing what others can’t and knowing what’s not yours to know leads to difficulties. I decided to blurt out less in the future, if I could get through this present situation.
Miss Dabney was fussing over the tea things. She was creating a diversion with food and trying hard to think of another topic that would be good etiquette, or at least safe.
“I beg your pardon,” I said quite loud to Alexander. “Lucille is none of my business. I shouldn’t have brought her up. And you figure out how I come by that particular piece of news, which you’ll find out is true. But if you call me a liar one more time, I’ll come up behind you sometime with a rock and knock you in the head. SPLATTER YOUR BRAINS ALL OVER THE SIDEWALK. AND I MEAN IT!” I screamed the last part.
“That is much better,” Miss Dabney said, peering into the teapot. “I would far rather hear children quarreling than talking the way you two have been. I found it quite . . . eccentric.” Then she looked at us both, and even Alexander saw the mockery in her wise old eye. “Now, how do you take your tea?” she asked me.
“Oh, any old way,” I replied, not knowing.
“No, no,” she sighed. “That is not a proper reply. And this is proper English tea. Sent directly from Fortnum and Mason in London. There is no tea like it in Bluff City, and you must know how you take it.
“If you are unsure, say, ‘Rather weak and just a little milk.’ If you have a sweet tooth as I expect you have, say, ‘One lump, if you please.’ If you have exotic tastes, and I rather think you might, you could say, ‘With lemon if you have it.’ Some people take their tea with nothing at all in it, but that is rather austere.
“Now I shall begin again. Miss Culp, how will you have your tea?”
I swallowed hard and replied, “Three lumps and lemon. If you have it. Please.”
“Not bad,” Miss Dabney murmured. She held an ornate cup high. With little silver tongs she dropped three lumps, one at a time, into the cup. And I saw that lumps were sugar. Then with a tiny fork she lifted a thin lemon slice into the cup too. It was all dainty and interesting, and Alexander looked worried. Miss Dabney handed the cup to me. With her long arms she could reach halfway across the parlor.
As she did this, there came the first of several loud noises from the back of the house. It sounded like a hired girl had taken a hammer to the plumbing. Then there was the noise of a drawer being banged shut and knives rattling in it. Then heavy footsteps across linoleum, back and forth. An oven door banged shut. This continued and ceased. Then it would start up again, drowning out parts of our conversation.
“Oh dear,” Miss Dabney mumbled to herself. “I wish she had a lighter touch.
“Now, Mr. Armsworth,” she said, holding up another cup. Alexander gripped his chair arms, and no sound escaped him. “Allow me to fix your tea as most gentlemen like it. Not too sweet and with enough milk to fortify it. Will that do?”
“That will do me very well, Miss Dabney,” he said, relieved. And I saw he was warming up to her within limits. His voice cracked as it often does. For many months now it’s been changing, but not for the better.
“The cups you are drinking from are Rockingham china, and they are more than seventy years old. Rockingham was Queen Victoria’s favorite china. Queen Victoria is dead, of course.”
At that, the sound of the hired girl in the kitchen evidently attacking a milk separator with a potato masher filled the parlor. Me and Alexander watched Miss Dabney’s lips moving; we couldn’t hear everything she said because of the noise. “. . . and saucer are painted with different British castles. Notice the castles on your cups.”
