A Figure of Speech

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” he said to her. “You’ll be late for school.” He yanked the paper away from her. “Go on, get going.”

  She pulled on a pointed shiny blue rain hat and tied the strings under her chin. “See you later, Grandpa. Save that newspaper for me to read, okay? How funny and old-fashioned things were in the olden days.” She ran out, slamming the door.

  Carl smoothed the yellowed newspaper in front of him. The olden days! The newspaper was only thirteen years old. Thirteen years—they had passed in a moment. He would have liked to have newspapers that were fifty years old, or sixty years old, or eighty years old. And still that wouldn’t have been the olden days, not to him. But since he didn’t have such papers, the ones he’d begun collecting after Frances died would have to do. He found it soothing, satisfying, to read about the disasters and tragedies of years ago. Terrible things had happened—wars, floods, hurricanes, drunken drivers, and maddened men with guns. Oh, the papers were daily full of such awful events, and yet the world was still here, and so was he. Yes, so was he.

  Chapter 3

  Jenny was walking behind Gail down Pittmann Street. It was still raining, a spongy, relentless September rain that pressed the fumes and garbagy odors of the city close to the ground. Jenny had lived on Pittmann Street all her life. She knew without looking that in the window of Richter’s Open-All-Night Groceteria faded cardboard Coke signs nudged plastic flowers and a dusty tower of canned soups. She knew that the Baldwins (who lived in the leaning pink frame house with a catalpa tree in the bare front yard) had three cars; and the Rimbauds (who lived in a green frame house with clotheslines strung on the porch) were mourning the recent death in a traffic accident of their retarded son, Nicky. She had watched the Pittmann Arms, a multi-dwelling apartment building, rise from a churned-up mudhole in the ground to its present raw splendor. And she could name every dog, every cat, and every kid between the ages of eight and eighteen in every house and apartment up and down the street.

  “Jenny!” Gail called, looking back. “Are you coming? Don’t poke along so!” Carrying a clear bubble umbrella over her head, Gail sidestepped a puddle.

  “Don’t wait for me,” Jenny yelled. She had to yell to be heard over the sound of traffic. Cars, bumper to bumper, poured through Pittmann Street in a frenzied rush toward the carpet mill, the iron works, and the pharmaceutical factory. “Go on!” she yelled. “Go ahead. Go, go!” With her long legs, she could easily have overtaken Gail. What for? So they could argue? There was exactly one year and a million miles of difference between them. Jenny was stork thin; Gail cat plump. Jenny was dark haired, dark eyed, impatient, and energetic. Gail, with sandy hair and light blue eyes, was slow and bossy. Being older, she took it to be her duty to note if Jenny brushed her teeth, changed her underwear, did her homework, and went to bed on time. This was intolerable to Jenny; in the past she’d often gone for Gail, flailing, pummeling, and screeching out her resentment and anger.

  Once, about a year before, Gail had taken a piece of yellow chalk and drawn a thick line around Jenny’s bed and bureau. “There, brat. Don’t you cross that line without my permission.”

  “Am I supposed to fly when I want to leave the room?” Jenny began flapping her wings and cackling like a crazy bird.

  “Shut up!” Gail said.

  “Make me! Make me!” Jenny flapped her wings faster and faster, cackling and jumping around Gail.

  “Stop that!”

  “Stop what? What? What?” Jenny cackled.

  “Mother. Mo-ther!” Gail screamed.

  “Jenny, you stop that wildness,” her mother called.

  But Jenny couldn’t stop. Carried away by her impersonation of a large crazy bird, she kept whirling and flapping, jumping and cackling until her mother marched in and slapped her.

  “I didn’t even start it. She did,” Jenny said, her hand on her stinging cheek. “You’re unfair!”

  “I don’t want to hear any more. You have a big mouth, and you’ll get another slap if you’re not careful.”

  Later Jenny had taken a sheet of lined school paper, divided it in half, and made two headings:

  ASSETS:

  1. Grandpa

  2. Strong legs

  LIABILITIES:

  1. Big mouth

  2. Middle girl

  3. Not liked as much by parents as Gail and Ethel

  4. Being ignored by Frankie and Vince

  5. Too skinny

  6. Funny looks

  a. big nose

  b. big mouth

  c. nothing-special eyes

  It had seemed to be a very short list of assets and a very long list of liabilities. But after she showed it to Grandpa, he had said, “You left something out of that first section. Out of Assets—a questioning mind.”

  She had written that in immediately. “3. Questioning mind.” Then she asked Grandpa, since he considered a questioning mind so fine, would he answer any questions she asked.

  “I don’t know what you’ve got going on in that head,” he said. “Sounds like a trap to me. I’ll answer as many questions as I can. There are some things I don’t know.”

  “Well, of course,” she said. “I never thought you knew everything.”

  “Didn’t you, though?” Grandpa had said, looking miffed.

  Ahead of Jenny, Gail disappeared around the corner. Jenny leaped over a puddle. She didn’t mind the rain in her face; in fact, she liked it. She ran up Jericho Hill, and at the corner of Hazard Street, Rhoda was waiting. “Jenny Pennoyer!” Rhoda cried.

  “Rhoda Rivers!”

  “I’ll be goldanged!”

  “Can say that again!”

  As if they didn’t meet nearly every morning to walk to school, exchanging news, gossip, teasing, and jokes.

  “New elephant joke,” Rhoda said. “How can you tell if an elephant’s been in the refrigerator?”

  Jenny groaned. “I bite. How?”

  “Naturally, by the footprints in the margarine. What’s the difference between an elephant and a raccoon wearing purple sunglasses?”

  “You know I hate these jokes.”

  “The elephant’s wearing blue sunglasses.”

  “That’s so stupid,” Jenny screamed, laughing.

  Rhoda smirked. She was a short, eager girl with a full head of frizzy hair. “Where do baby elephants come from?”

  “I refuse to answer.”

  “BIG storks.” She linked arms with Jenny. “So-what’s new, what’s fresh, what’s outrageous this morning?”

  “My father was ranting at Frankie again last night. Called him a ‘crazy mole.’ Said he runs around like a crazy mole too much.”

  “Doesn’t your father know that boy might be an Olympic runner some day?”

  Jenny shook her head. “Not Frankie. He just likes to run.”

  If he ran in a race, Jenny’s father had said, if he tried to win medals, or if he was on the cross-country team, I’d understand. But Frankie ran alone.

  “He doesn’t care about winning or anything like that,” Jenny said. “Just running.”

  “I could like that boy a whole lot,” Rhoda said. “How come he doesn’t know I’m living and breathing and ready to be passionately in love with him?”

  “I’ll give him the message.”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “Don’t you want to build up his ego?”

  “No!”

  Jenny wouldn’t let it go. “Where’s your public spirit? Your compassion? Your heart? Listen, I’ll tell Frankie, ‘Rhoda Rivers has a mad, passionate, secret thing for you—’”

  “Forget it! Forget I said anything!”

  “‘She wants to whisper elephant jokes in your ear.’”

  “Jenny! You fink.”

  “And his eyes will open wide—”

  “Those sleepy eyes. Fat chance,” Rhoda said, giggling.

  “And this big grin will come to his face, and he’ll be so set up he won’t care what my father says to him.” />
  “Does he care now?”

  “I’ll say. When my father goes after him about running or not doing good in school, you should see Frankie’s face.”

  One day in a bookstore called The Paper Place, Jenny had seen a book called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Frankie! she thought, and she bought the book. As it turned out it was short stories, only the first one being about a runner; and the runner, although a boy, wasn’t much like Frankie at all, since he was English and a thief and had been sent to reform school. But there was a line in the story that caught Jenny’s imagination at once: “It’s a treat being a long distance runner, out in the world by yourself, with not a soul to make you bad tempered or tell you what to do.” She read that several times, wondering if that was why Frankie ran. Frankie, her sleepy-eyed, mop-headed, sullen, strange, running brother. She’d never quite understood him until then; and even so, she wasn’t sure that she really did. But maybe she was closer.

  She wanted to give the book to her father, but didn’t quite dare. What if he took it the wrong way? Thought she meant that Frankie would grow up to be a thief and get sent to reform school? She gave the book to Frankie, anyway, but as far she knew he’d never even cracked the first page. Disappointing. But that was the way things seemed to work out a lot. People misunderstood each other, fought, disagreed, couldn’t get together, never said what they really meant. People who ought to have been close—her father and Frankie, she and Gail, she and her mother. Oh, yes! She and her mother.

  Her father could be sharp with her, often was, but between Jenny and her mother there ran a deep, underlying irritation. Jenny had first become conscious of it when she was eleven, and had gone through phases trying to break that secret rawness. She had, quite easily, gone through a terrifically bratty phase, doing a lot of kicking and screaming, which only got her confined to her room day after day. Then she tried being “sweet and good,” but the strain of it all was too much, and after a week or so she reverted to normal. Another time, after reading Little Women, she prayed diligently for her mother to be transformed into a Marmie-Mother, gentle, understanding … and perfect, while visions of herself as sweet as Beth and smart as Jo danced in her head. In the end it all come down to the same thing—she was Jenny, her mother was her mother, and nothing changed.

  Rhoda tugged at her arm. “You’re daydreaming. Want to sleep over Friday night?”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “When’s your brother Vince coming for a visit?” Rhoda, being an only child, found Jenny’s family of brothers and sisters enviable.

  “He just went back to college a couple of weeks ago, but Thanksgiving, I guess,” Jenny said. “If he doesn’t go to some girl’s house like he did last year.” Ever since he’d been fifteen, girls had been calling Vince on the phone and ringing the Pennoyer doorbell to say, “Is Vince in? I was just passing in the neighborhood and thought I’d ask.” In his senior year at Alliance High, Vince had been voted “Best Personality and Handsomest Boy.” Now that he was away at college, Jenny was sure that girls were still crazy about him. She would be, too, if she was older and not his sister. He had fantastic eyes, like Omar Shariff, and had grown a mustache that her father hated, but that she adored.

  “Listen,” Rhoda said, “let me know when Lover Boy comes home. I want to come over and drool a little.”

  Chapter 4

  That night at suppertime the Pennoyer family was all gathered around the table. Jenny had come flying in last and received her father’s disapproving stare. He believed in promptness and was always ready to sit down at the dining room table at exactly five forty-five. “Grace, Jenny,” he ordered.

  Jenny folded her hands and looked down. “Bless this supper, oh Lord, and thank You for providing for the Pennoyer family. Amen. I’m starved. Pass the hamburgers, Gail.”

  “Say, please.”

  “Pass the hamburgers!”

  “Mom gets them first,” Gail said virtuously, passing the wide blue dish to Mrs. Pennoyer.

  “What happened in school today, Frankie?” Mr. Pennoyer, napkin tucked firmly into his shirt collar, reached for the salad bowl.

  Frankie shook his head. “Same as usual. Nothing.”

  “What do you mean—nothing?”

  Frankie stuffed bread in his mouth. “Just nothing.”

  “How could nothing happen? You were in school all day, weren’t you? Now what happened in school today?”

  Frankie twisted in his seat, then slumped down on his spine. “Uh—nothing. I can’t think of anything.”

  “You went to classes. You were there. Tell me something that went on, something you learned.”

  Frankie’s eyes were squeezed nearly shut. Jenny threw her brother a sympathetic glance. She hated these inquisitions. Questions and answers, just like school. “We had assembly today,” she said, trying to kick Frankie under the table. “Mr. Bastable from the City Environmental Agency talked to us about the Citizens Clean Up Your City Program. CCUYCP. Remember, Frankie?”

  “Were you at the assembly or not?” Mr. Pennoyer said. Frankie nodded. “Well, what did you get out of it?”

  “Get out of it?” Frankie repeated. His face was twisted as if he were in dreadful pain. “Get out of it,” he said again. He shook his head. “Well—not much, I guess.”

  “Seems like you don’t get much out of anything,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “That’s because you don’t put enough into anything to get much out of it. Do you think I’d be assistant manager for a large supermarket if I didn’t put anything into my job? I started as a stock boy and I went up to become assistant manager.”

  Everyone was looking at Frankie. Jenny felt sorry for him. He didn’t like school, so he didn’t do well in school; nearly every night there was some kind of gruesome fuss over Frankie and school.

  “What grade did you say you were in, Frankie?” Grandpa asked. He’d forgotten to take off his steel-rimmed glasses before supper, and they’d slipped down on his nose, giving him the look of an absentminded tortoise.

  “You know—tenth grade,” Frankie mumbled.

  “Next year,” Mr. Pennoyer said, “he’ll be in tenth grade again, if ‘nothing’ keeps on happening.”

  “But it’s true, some days nothing happens in school,” Jenny said.

  “I never went past grade eight,” Grandpa said. “Left school and went to work. My father, your grandfather, Frank, never got more than three grades of school.”

  “Times have changed, Pop,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “Kids have to graduate these days. A boy can go to college if he puts his mind to it. Look at Vince.”

  “Vince, perfect Vince,” Frankie said.

  “Yeah, Vince,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “You could take a few dozen lessons from your brother Vince, instead of giving out with the wise remarks.”

  “If we were all still living on the farm,” Grandpa went on, “the boy could set his hand to work instead of school books.”

  “Frankie doesn’t want to be a farmer,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. She had Ethel next to her in the highchair and was feeding her from a dish of warmed baby food. “Besides, nobody’s lived on the farm for years, Grandpa. If Frankie would just put more effort into his schoolwork he could do a whole lot better. We all know he’s got the brains to do good work.”

  “Pennoyers grew up on the farm for six generations,” Grandpa said, ignoring Mrs. Pennoyer’s remarks. “My grandfather and my father grew up there. My great-great-great-grandfather cleared the first four acres of land in what was total wilderness. The land was covered solid with trees—”

  “Okay, Pop, okay, we know all that.”

  “You’ve told us all that before, Grandpa,” Gail said.

  “So what?” Jenny said.

  “So nothing. We’ve just heard it all before.” Gail rolled her eyes ceilingward.

  “Pennoyers kept clearing that land, till they had one hundred and ten acres cleared,” Grandpa went on, emphasizing each word in his harsh voice. “My grandfather died working on the farm. But
my father was a city man. So we had to rent it out after that. And it was rented till ten years ago.”

  “And it’s just been hanging around ever since,” Mr. Pennoyer interrupted. “Taking tax money down the drain, doing nobody any good. If you sold the place, Pop, you could probably make a nice few bucks on it. Money always comes in handy.”

  “I ain’t selling it,” Grandpa said. “I’m going back there sometime. See how things are. Why, that land could still be worked. That’s rich, good farmland. All it needs is a little attention.”

  Mr. Pennoyer laughed. “You’ll never go back, Pop.” He brushed his hand over his thinning blond hair. “Quit dreaming. You’ve been talking that way all your life and never gone back yet.”

  Grandpa sat back in his chair. “I had some of the happiest times of my life at the farm. Summers my mother and I used to go by train from Alliance to Colfax, took us two days, and in Colfax we’d take a trolley to New Sayre. From there, we’d hire a carriage to take us the rest of the way, eight miles, to the farm. It’s on a hill, the last farm on the road.”

  “Yes, Grandpa, we know,” Mrs. Pennoyer said patiently.

  “That road was Pennoyer Hill for the longest time. But after my grandmother began raising turkeys, the people around about there called it Turkey Hill. Those turkeys were something. My grandmother—”

  “Oh, no, not here, not with that kind of talk,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “I don’t want to hear about those turkey lice again, especially while I’m eating. No turkey lice!”