“I’ll just wash myself off real good when I get home,” she said. “That way I’ll be sure of no germs.”
Rowena’s mother whirled and thundered back upstairs, slamming the door behind herself. The cellar stairs, the walls trembled from the force of her blow.
“Refreshments are served!” Rowena’s mother roared through the closed door. Nell said she couldn’t stay. And all the time we were eating the freshly baked bread and drinking the cocoa, we heard pots and pans crashing around the kitchen. Rowena said her mother was out of sorts, probably due to what Nell had said about her housekeeping. She said not to pay her mother any mind, and we tried not to. It was sort of hard to hear ourselves talk with all that racket going on overhead, though.
11
Today we all got postcards from my mother. Even my father got one. Mine had a picture of a warthog on it. It said, “This reminds me of you. Ha-ha. See you very soon. Love and kisses, Mother.” She always signs herself “Mother” when she sends us postcards. I like that: Mother. It’s a nice word. We don’t call her that, though. The boys call her Mama and I call her Mom. Daddy calls her Mary. He used to call her Hon. Sometimes he forgets and still calls her Hon. But not often.
“How will we know when she’s coming home?” I asked him.
“She’ll cable us,” he said. “I’ll drive to the airport to meet her.”
“What if she brings him?” I didn’t want to say Angus.
He looked at me, his eyes very bright and slick-looking. “Why, I’ll bring him back with us. What did you think I was going to do, dump him off in the weeds by the highway?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d do that.”
“It’s an idea, though,” he said, and we both laughed.
I went around the house looking at everything with an eye to how much it might bring at our yard sale. When I asked my father if he had anything he didn’t want that we could have, he rummaged through his drawers and came up with some shirts with frayed collars and a muffler with fringe at either end he said he’d never liked. It was a perfectly O.K. muffler and should bring a dollar easy.
The boys got into the spirit of the thing. Tad gave me a box of hardly used crayons, and a plush dog wearing faded overalls and a ratty old straw hat. “I hate him,” Tad confided. “He smiles all the time.” That seemed as good a reason as any for hating someone, and I didn’t argue with him. Sidney chipped in his outgrown Donald Duck slippers, and, not to be outdone by Tad, he also threw in a set of plastic measuring cups and an old toothbrush.
I counted on my mother’s going through a wild flurry of housecleaning when she got home. She has fits of clearing things out. Often she throws out a lot of stuff she wishes later she’d kept
“Oh, dear, why didn’t you stop me!” she wails when she goes looking for some treasure before she remembers she’s given it away to some thrift shop. Or, sometimes, to me. I’m a pack rat I never turn anything down. If she’s given whatever it is she’s looking for to me, I offer it back. She always says, “No, I’m not going to be an Indian giver. You keep it.”
When Pamela came for supper last night, I asked her if she had anything she’d care to donate to our yard sale. She just looked down her nose at me. I always thought that was just an expression, but with Pamela it’s-true. She has the nose for it. She sort of sights down the barrel of her nose as if it were a rifle. And gives you this icy glance that’s calculated to put you in your place and keep you there. It doesn’t work with me, but I can see it would with some. Anyway, she looked down her nose and said, “Yard sales are so depressing. And so tacky, somehow.” I said ours wasn’t going to be either depressing or tacky. She looked at me and smiled a disbelieving smile. I could’ve smacked her. If she’d been my age I probably would’ve.
Nell said she could read bumps on people’s heads and it might be good if we had a head-reading table at the sale. Betty and Rowena said that sounded more like a carnival than a yard sale and turned down the idea. I happened to mention it to the boys and they were thrilled. They began horsing around, feeling each other’s heads.
“I got no bumps on mine,” Sidney said. Later on in the evening, however, Tad belted Sidney with a small red fire engine. After the ruckus died down, I ran my hand over Sidney’s head and told him he had a huge bump at last. Sidney was quite pleased and kept touching his bump, although it was tender, and saying, “I got a bump, after all.” At that age, it takes very little to please them. That’s one nice thing about being a little kid.
On Sunday I checked our attic. I found a box of linen napkins and tablecloths my mother had decided were too much trouble to iron, and a pile of old magazines. Then, to my delight, I discovered a ratty old chair pushed way back under the eaves. It was made of some scratchy fabric the color of dried blood. I sat in it for a while to get the feel of it. It didn’t collapse and was, in fact, quite comfortable. I went downstairs to ask my father if he’d help me carry it down to the garage to put aside for the yard sale. He was on the living room floor drawing pictures for the boys.
“Dad,” I said, “there’s a terrible old beat-up chair in the attic. Can I have it for our yard sale?”
“No,” he said, not even taking time to think about it. “No.”
“Why not?” I asked when I’d gotten over my surprise. I was sure he’d say it was all right.
“Well,” he said, sitting back on his heels, “because that old chair holds many pleasant memories for me. It’s the chair your mother and I were sitting in when I asked her to marry me.”
That chair wasn’t big enough for two people, I thought.
“Was Mom sitting on your lap?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she was, and her head was resting right here,” and he put his hand to his shoulder to show us where our mother’s head had been. “She wore a pink dress, and she cried when I asked her. She said she wasn’t sure she loved me. She thought she did, she said, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure what being in love felt like. She’d never been in love. Well, I had, once or twice, but never like this. I was afraid if she spent more time trying to make sure she loved me, she might change her mind entirely, so I said, “Of course you love me,” and I was so sure, so positive I was right, she agreed to marry me the following week.”
The boys and I were in some kind of trance. Sidney plugged up his mouth with his thumb and crawled into my father’s lap, what there was of it. A real lap is possible only when a person sits in a chair or on a couch. My father was sitting on the floor, so his lap wasn’t what it should be. Still, there was room for Sidney. A tiny smile worked its way around his thumb, and Sidney settled back as if he were getting ready to listen to a new story, a fairy tale he hadn’t heard before.
Our father had never told us such a romantic story in his whole life. He couldn’t have made it up. He was our father, and we didn’t think of what or how he’d been before he was our father. Everybody is somebody else before they’re a father, don’t forget. The idea of my mother and father sharing the chair, the wonderful way they’d shared it, was quite overwhelming. If we all sat very still, maybe he’d forget we were there and his story would continue. It was as if he were talking to himself.
“I’ve often thought,” he said slowly, “that I shouldn’t have pressed her. I should have let her think it through. She was young. She wanted to see the world, taste things she’d never tasted. I’d been in the army and I’d seen the parts of the world I wanted to see. I was ready to settle down. I made her think she couldn’t live without me. If she’d done what she wanted and then settled down, maybe she’d be happier now. Not so restless.”
Sidney made his little slurping sounds. Tad and I stared into the fire. As he leaned against me, Tad sighed, a long, deep sigh.
“You have to let people do what they will,” my father said. “In letting them go, you bind them to you. That was my mistake. I thought that if I held her to me by marrying her, she’d be mine forever. It doesn’t work that way.”
&nb
sp; My father was not a person who often let his children or anyone else see inside his heart. We were afraid to move, to break the spell. A log popped and scattered sparks on the hearth and over onto the rug. We scrambled up to kick the sparks back inside the fireplace. When we sat down again, it was too late.
“Well,” my father said, “time to get back to work.” He left us there, the boys and me. I felt very old. I wondered what he would have said if the log hadn’t popped. What secrets would he have told us?
Tad said, “Read us a Curious George, Sky?” and I said I would.
“What happened at the end?” Sidney said. His eyelids were drooping. He was almost asleep.
“I haven’t read the story yet, dopey,” I told him.
“No,” he said. “I mean what happened at the end of Daddy’s story?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
12
My mother’s been gone six days now. Almost a week. Only eight more days until she comes home.
“Is Mama coming home with him?” Tad asked me. He meant Angus.
“I don’t know,” I said. Which was true. Tad shot me a wary glance out of his unblinking eyes. He thought I was lying. I can always tell when Tad thinks I’m lying. There’s something about that wary look of his that makes you think you might be lying even when you know you’re telling the truth.
Pamela’s coming for supper again tonight. I think she invites herself. I don’t think my father wants her to come that often. “How come she doesn’t ask you to her house for supper?” I asked my father. “How come she doesn’t ask us all to her house? She always comes here.” I try not to let my father know how I feel about Pamela. I think I do a pretty good job of concealing my feelings. It’s not easy.
“Pamela is probably the world’s worst cook,” my father said.
“Well, then,” I said, “why doesn’t she learn? She could go to cooking school.” She’s lazy. That’s why she doesn’t learn how to cook.
I read the boys a story every night before they go to bed. Their favorite is Curious George. They like the one about Curious George having a paper route. He folds the papers into the shape of a little boat. Then he sails the paper boats on a pond. The book has a little diagram showing how to fold papers into boats. Now Tad can hardly wait until he has a paper route. His customers will have to get used to having their papers delivered in boat form, I guess. Also, Sidney thinks it’d be neat if my mother brought him a monkey instead of a little alligator. I forgot to mention that Curious George is a monkey. Sidney thinks we should call up my mother in Africa so he can change his order.
“I could feed him bananas,” Sidney said, talking around his thumb. Try talking with your thumb in your mouth if you want to know what Sidney sounds like. Either a Russian or a Chinese. Take your pick.
“That’s what monkeys eat, bananas,” Sidney said. “I could take him to show-and-tell. I think a monkey’d be more fun than an alligator. What do you think?” He leaned on my knee and looked up at me, his little face so serious. Sidney cracks me up. He really does.
“Well,” I said, “a monkey’s more like a person than an alligator. If you want a pet that’s like a person, I guess a monkey would be a good idea.”
“He could wear my pants when I grow out of them,” Sidney said. “And my pajamas. And my sneakers. And my underwear. And my …”
Once started, there was no stopping him. He darted back and forth to his bedroom, carrying armloads of his clothes, which he stacked in a towering pile.
My father looked on, bemused, as Sidney stuffed all his belongings into a shopping bag.
“Sidney, you’re too young to go away for the weekend,” my father said. “Put that stuff back until you get a little older. Put it back until your mother gets home. She can handle this. I’ve got Plotsie into a situation that neither he nor I seem to be able to get out of. And I’ve got supper to get. My mind is befuddled.”
“Do you like being a father?” Sidney asked, after some thought.
My father said of course he did. “I just wondered,” Sidney said.
“You want me to fix supper?” I asked.
“No,” my father said.”I can handle it. But thanks anyway.” My specialty is spaghetti with clam sauce. We’ve had it quite a lot since my mother went away. Last time I added some hot pepper flakes to jazz it up. Those little flakes don’t look like much, but do they ever pack a wallop! Dad and the boys choked and coughed and carried on. I finished all mine. It brought tears to-my eyes, but I wasn’t going to admit defeat
Tad tugged at my sleeve. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
“Is it a secret or can you show it to me here?”
My father was checking the refrigerator, and Sidney was off in his room, humming loudly, opening and closing drawers. We were alone. Tad opened his mouth. “See. Another one.” He waggled his front tooth with his tongue.
“Can I feel?” I said. He nodded.
“It’s hardly loose at all. You won’t be losing that one for a while,” I reassured him. “Probably not until after Mama gets home.”
“You think so?” Tad said anxiously. “If it comes out and I put it under my pillow, somebody might take it.” Tad gave me a dark look. “This time if he lays a finger on it, he’s gonna get it. Pow!” The flow of words stopped, but from the fierce glint in his eye, I knew he meant what he said. Sidney had better not flush this one down the toilet
“We’ll figure out something, Tad,” I said, patting him. “Don’t worry.”
Sidney showed up, huffing and puffing, dragging an old ski jacket with a zipper that didn’t work. “He can have this,” he said. “For when it gets cold.”
“This is going to be the best-dressed monkey in the whole State of Maine,” I told him.
You’d think as long as Pamela comes to our house so often for supper she’d bring something. A deck of cards or a candy bar. Something. She has never once brought us anything. Some people grow on you. You don’t like them at first but you get to like them when you know them better. Pamela is just the opposite. I liked her all right at first, but she’s been going downhill steadily ever since. I decided to give her one last chance to win my heart. I opened the drawers we kept the knives and forks in and left them open. So she’d have no trouble finding them after she asked what she could do to help, and I said, “Set the table,” and then she couldn’t possibly come back with “Where do you keep the knives and forks?” because they’d be sitting there, staring out at her. With people like Pamela, you have to stay one step ahead all the time. Lazy people will do almost anything to get out of doing things. I hate lazies.
At last I heard a car outside. It was Pamela. Right on time, probably suffering from hunger pains. Sidney had just discovered an old coloring book. Each page bore a big slash of color across the pictures he was supposed to color. Just one big slash.
“Look at this,” he commanded, showing it to me. “I must’ve did this when I was just a little baby.” His voice was loaded with scorn. He tossed the coloring book into his shopping bag along with his discarded clothing intended for his monkey and staggered around the room, looking like a helper from the Salvation Army.
“Hi, ducks!” Pamela greeted us. “I brought you a pressy.” What do you know.
The boys descended upon her, shouting, “What is it?” forgetting, for the moment, that she wasn’t their favorite person. She had brought us a half gallon of ice cream. The cheap kind, I’m sorry to say, the kind that has more air and ice in it than cream. I know that’s looking a gift horse in the mouth, but it’s true. She must’ve leaned into the frozen food compartment and thought, Those little monsters will never know the difference. She was wrong. I knew.
“Thank you,” I said.
“What kind is it?” Tad asked.
“Why, Tad,” Pamela cooed, “can’t you read that? A big boy like you. See, that’s a C, then that’s an H,” and so on, giving Tad a spelling lesson that humiliated him and made him clamp his mouth shut as tight as any
clam.
I kept waiting for Pamela to say, “What can I do to help?” in that special voice of hers. She didn’t say it. She sat on one of the kitchen stools watching my father cook supper.
“How long till we eat, Dad?” I said.
“Not long. Ten, fifteen minutes.”
I looked over at her. She was drinking sherry out of one of my mother’s good glasses, swinging her foot, admiring her knees. I could tell setting the table was far from her thoughts.
What would my mother do? I wondered. Would she outwait Pamela, then, when the food was ready, spring into action, pretending she’d forgotten to set the table? Or would she simply say, “Here are the knives and forks. Go to it.”
I decided my mother would take the direct approach. She usually does. “Here, Pam,” I said, handing over the utensils. She’d told me to call her by her first name. I guess she thought that would make us friends. Also closer in age.
“Go to it,” I said, smiling at her. “Pam.”
Slowly, very slowly, she put down her glass and said “Why, of course, dear. I’d be glad to help. All you had to do was ask me.” She uncrossed her legs, slid her bottom off the stool, and stood there, waiting, no doubt, for my father to say, “You do it, Sky. Pam’s a guest,” as he had on several occasions. This time he was silent The boys watched as she laid out the knives and forks and spoons, lining them up as carefully as if she’d been a waitress at a classy restaurant.
I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the hard edge of the tub, smiling to myself. Then I turned on the cold water and washed my face hard, to bring myself into line. I laughed until I cried.
13
A light, cold rain was falling Monday morning when Nell and I met at the bus stop.
“Where’s everybody?” I said. We were the only ones there. Tad had a cold and Sidney too. “Where’s your brothers?” I asked Nell.
“Down with nothing,” she said. “Watching TV all day long. She said they could stay home. She lets them get away with murder. Because they’re boys.” She shot a glance at me. “Mothers favor boys. I bet your mother does the same.”
Ask Anybody Page 5
