A Figure of Speech

by Norma Fox Mazer

  Grandpa raised a forkful of peas to his mouth and slowly chewed. Then he sipped his water. His mouth was clamped shut. He wasn’t talking anymore.

  Jenny’s face flushed. Why couldn’t they have listened just one more time? She knew Grandpa told his stories over and over, but so what? She’d heard the turkey story plenty of times. He liked telling it, and she liked listening to it! My grandmother loved those turkeys like babies. Like little pets or children. Mornings, she’d sit on the back stoop in the sun and comb lice out of their feathers. She’d take a turkey into her lap, talk to it, and comb through the feathers like the pages of a book, taking out the lice and snapping each one on her fingernail. All night the turkeys slept in the trees and all day they ate grasshoppers, but every morning they waited around for Grandma to snap their lice.

  “… traffic on Pittmann Street has just become worse and worse,” Mrs. Pennoyer was saying. “Remember, Frank, when we moved here how quiet it was?”

  “Wasn’t quiet, ever,” said Grandpa, contradicting her.

  “Well, it was so,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “I know what I remember.”

  “Big trucks rumbling along the street at night, keep a person awake—”

  “You wouldn’t hear them, Pop, if you’d close your window,” Mr. Pennoyer said.

  “Always slept with my window open, and always will.”

  Mr. Pennoyer motioned Frankie to pass the biscuits. “Close your window, you’ll sleep better, hear less noise—”

  “Sleep with my window closed, feel like I’m in jail,” Grandpa said thinly.

  “—less noise and keep the damp out,” Mr. Pennoyer went on, raising his voice. “You’re damn stubborn, Pop. A man your age ought to have more sense!”

  “How come you’re always telling me to respect my elders?” Jenny broke in. “Grandpa’s your elder, and that’s not a very respectful way to—”

  “You finished eating, big mouth?” her father said. “Well, finish up and be quiet.”

  Jenny plunged her fork viciously into a scrap of biscuit. Kill, kill. One law for them, another for kids. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother dab at Grandpa’s chin with a napkin, saw Grandpa rear back like a horse that’s been stung.

  “Ketchup on your chin,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “I was just trying to be helpful. You’re so touchy, Grandpa.”

  “Some people you can’t help,” Mr. Pennoyer said.

  “Well, I can try,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “I’m not the sort of person who can sit back and let things happen, no matter what.”

  Jenny felt that this was the prelude to something else. Her mother had a quivery, defiant expression at the corners of her mouth, the sort of expression she got when she was going to say something for someone’s good.

  “You all know what happened on this street last week,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “To poor Nicky Rimbaud. All week it’s been on my mind. I can’t forget his blood in the street.”

  Jenny stopped eating. She’d seen Nicky’s blood on the street, too, the dark oily stain on the wet pavement. It had happened on a rainy afternoon. Coming home from school, she’d seen the ambulance angled in the road, red light flashing restlessly; a black police car fenced the street while a policeman wearing a wet white cape routed traffic toward Catherine Street. Jenny’s first thought had been of Ethel. What if the baby had somehow freed herself from her playpen, bumped down the stairs, and with that pleased grin fixed on her fat red face crawled into the street? With that piercing thought, Jenny had run, and found Ethel safely in the playpen on the front porch. The crowd had gathered in front of the Rim-bauds’.

  “He walked right into the street,” a woman said as the ambulance moved away, ghostly white in the blotchy rainfall, tires whispering over the wet pavement.

  “Who?” Jenny said, touching the woman’s arm.

  “Nicky Rimbaud. You know, the retarded kid. This lousy traffic, the driver couldn’t stop. His head split like an eggshell, it was so delicate.”

  Jenny had felt hollow. Nicky, strange, pitiful Nicky with his milky vacant eyes and huge, waterlogged head that lolled against his shoulder. The day before she had given him a handful of potato chips and he had droolingly smiled his thanks. She walked back home, feeling dazed and strange. Nicky. Poor Nicky. In her bedroom she’d walked around and around touching things, thinking, Nicky’s dead. Not that she had ever loved Nicky, or even liked him that much. There had always been something faintly repulsive about him. But—dead? She picked up Ethel’s Fuzzy from the crib, dropped it, moved a glass horse on Gail’s gadget shelf, touched the snapshot of Grandpa tacked to the wall above her bed. Then she went to the window, pushed aside the curtain, frowning intently into the rain. Nicky had always been there on the street, strange and pitiable, but there. So this was the way things happened, she thought; so that was the way things changed.

  “It might have been anyone,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “This traffic—I tell you, we’re lucky no one in the family has been hurt. When I heard that screech of brakes that day my blood ran cold.”

  “Let’s not talk about it now,” Jenny said. “I don’t want to think about Nicky dying.”

  “Who are you, the Queen of England?” Gail said. “Mom wants to talk about it.”

  “I’d rather talk about turkey lice than about Nicky being killed!”

  “We have to talk about it,” Mrs. Pennoyer said, “because it’s a lesson to all of us, a warning.”

  “No use burying our heads in the sand,” Mr. Pennoyer agreed. “It happened. Got to face reality, Jenny.”

  She pushed aside her plate. Reality. Nicky’s head, eggshell frail, smashed. Oily smear of blood. Silent white ambulance. Mrs. Rimbaud crying high in her throat.

  Mrs. Pennoyer poked a bit of mashed food into Ethel’s mouth. “So, as I was about to say, I know, Grandpa, that you like to walk to that little tobacco store on Lyons Avenue, but ever since this awful thing happened to Nicky Rimbaud, I’ve been worrying and thinking about you. Now I spoke to Frank about this, and he agrees. We want you to promise us you won’t cross the streets anymore without someone else with you. You know, to get to the tobacco shop you have to cross Pittmann at Fifth and then Collamer Avenue.”

  “You forgot Grove Avenue,” Grandpa said shortly. “You forgot I might run in front of a car on Grove Avenue.”

  “Okay, Pop, okay, don’t get on your high horse. Amelia’s got a point. You’re an old guy. Eighty-three years old. Hell, nobody expects you to be one hundred percent at your age. We’ve got to be careful, watch you, that’s the long and short of it.”

  Grandpa pushed back his chair and fumbled in his sagging sweater pocket for his pipe. “That boy was retarded.” Spots of brownish color appeared on his face. “Retarded and a child, may he rest in peace.” His left hand began an aimless, agitated sweep of the table and knocked over a glass of water. The water spread over the tablecloth and the glass fell to the floor and broke.

  “Wah, wah,” Ethel said, pounding her fists on her highchair tray.

  “For Christ sake, Pop,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “I don’t have enough broken stuff at the store, I have to come home and get the same thing!”

  “Never mind,” Mrs. Pennoyer said tightly, “it’s only a glass. The children break glasses all the time.”

  Grandpa left the table, and after the glass was picked up, the rest of the family continued their meal. Jenny wanted to get away and go down to Grandpa, but knew better than to try before everyone had finished eating and the dishes were cleared, washed, and dried. It was her turn to help her mother in the kitchen.

  “Will you switch kitchen nights with me?” she asked Gail.

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s no reason,” Gail said, fingering the last piece of cake on the cake plate.

  “Will you or won’t you!”

  “You are the rudest child I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing,” Gail said. She sliced a thin piece off the cake and delicately put it into her mouth.

&nb
sp; “Then you won’t?” Jenny said.

  “You said it, I didn’t.” Gail put her dessert dish, sticky with crumbs, in front of Jenny. “Here, you might as well carry that in when you clear.”

  Jenny pushed back her chair. She felt her head blaze with anger at Gail and at all of them for the way they had acted toward Grandpa. She clanked dishes and silver and glasses together.

  “Watch it,” her mother said sharply. “I don’t want any more broken dishes tonight.”

  In the kitchen her mother ran hot water in the sink and poured in detergent. “Finish clearing,” she said, “and don’t forget to wipe the table. And don’t dawdle. I like these dishes wiped while they’re still hot.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, okay,” Jenny said. Her mother gave her an angry stare, and she subsided, doing her work silently and quickly, but the arguments in her head wouldn’t subside.

  “You and Dad talk to Grandpa like he’s dumb. Or a kid,” she said, grabbing a towel and starting to wipe dishes. “You make him feel awful.”

  Mrs. Pennoyer dipped a saucer in the rinse sink, then put it in the rubber drain. “Are you telling me how I should act? I’ve lived forty-three years, I guess I know how to act by now without my thirteen-year-old daughter advising me.”

  Jenny picked up a glass and rubbed it hard. “I just mean you should think more about Grandpa’s feelings. He’s a person, too.”

  “I know all about your grandfather, Jenny. I’ve lived with him under the same roof for thirteen years, and I knew him a long time before you were born. Don’t forget that. Let me tell you something, Jenny, it’s no picnic living with that man. I don’t like to say it, but that’s the way it is. He’s not the cleanest old man in the world, sometimes he doesn’t change his underwear for a week. And his towels—when he finally brings them up to be laundered, I have to scrub them by hand. And I do! And the same stories over and over—when he gets going he doesn’t give anyone a chance to get a word in edgewise.” She scoured a pot fiercely.

  Jenny concentrated on the glass she was drying. There was an aching tightness in her chest. “That’s really a rotten way to talk about Grandpa.”

  “That’s enough out of you. If you want to go to Rhoda’s tomorrow night, you better watch your tongue right now.”

  “You don’t want Grandpa to talk, you don’t want him to do anything.” Jenny knew she should stop, but couldn’t. “You and Dad both, you act like you don’t want Grandpa to even live.”

  “What a hateful way to talk! You ought to be slapped for talking that way about your parents. Apologize! You apologize to me at once.”

  For a moment Jenny couldn’t speak; her throat was closed as tightly as a fist. “I’m sorry,” she got out. “I’m sorry I said that.”

  Her mother’s eyes held hers. Her mother had deep brown eyes, so brown that they seemed to spill over into the whites, which also had a faint tint of brown. “All right,” she said at last, “I accept your apology. I try, you know, I don’t want to hurt Grandpa. That’s what I meant about the traffic. I just want him to be careful. Is that so hard to understand?” She looked at Jenny for a long time, holding her with her eyes. It was often like this after a fight. Her mother’s eyes got deeper, browner, and she seemed to Jenny to be saying silently, Please understand, don’t hold it against me. Jenny, in the grip of anger, hurt feelings, and outrage, would feel that plea, would be forced to meet her mother’s brown, pleading eyes, eyes that had softened and almost begged Jenny to understand. Understand what? It was always that nagging secret, that feeling of something else behind the words they had flung at each other.

  Chapter 5

  “Here comes Ethel,” Jenny sang out, carrying the baby into the kitchen on her hip the next morning. The Pennoyer family ate breakfast in the kitchen, rather than the dining room, and although it made for a crowded scene, it also made things cozy and warm. Breakfast was a good time of the day. Mrs. Pennoyer didn’t mind making everyone a different breakfast (this morning they were having french toast, oatmeal, and scrambled eggs), and Ethel got passed from lap to lap, with everyone taking a turn squeezing her and feeding her from their plates.

  “Look, Mom, Wilson’s has a special on sweaters,” Gail said, reading the newspaper over her father’s shoulder.

  “Maybe you can find something,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “You, too, Jenny.”

  “I’m going down right after school then,” Gail said. “You want to come, brat?”

  Jenny shook her head. “I’m going over to Rhoda’s. Mom, can I sleep over at Rhoda’s tonight? And eat supper with them?”

  “Did they invite you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mrs. Rivers invited you?”

  Jenny nodded and held her milk glass to Ethel’s mouth. Ethel drank a little, then let the rest of the mouthful dribble down her chin. “Ethel, you slob,” Jenny said.

  “You sure it’s all right with Mrs. Rivers?” Mrs. Pennoyer said, heaping more oatmeal in Frankie’s dish.

  “Yes, Mom, positive.”

  “All right then.”

  “Thanks!” Jenny passed the baby to Gail. She wanted to get down to see Grandpa and tell him she wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. She was stacking her knife and fork on her plate when Mr. Pennoyer groaned. “Oh, no. Look at this,” he said, rattling the newspaper. “Would you believe it? They’ve got chuck down for thirty-nine cents a pound instead of ninety-three cents. I’m going to have every bargain-minded housewife in Alliance jamming the store. And when they find out it’s a mistake they’re all going to want to kill me.”

  “Maybe you could get the newspaper to send someone over to explain they made the mistake,” Mrs. Pennoyer said.

  “Sure, the mob’ll string us both up together,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “Oh, brother, this beats all.”

  “Poor Daddy,” Jenny said, bringing her dishes to the sink.

  “Jenny,” her mother said, “write Rhoda’s number down and tack it to the bulletin board.” Mrs. Pennoyer glanced at the tackboard that hung on the wall behind the table and frowned. “What’s that on the board anyway? Frankie, what’s on the board?”

  “I don’t know,” Frankie said, reaching behind him to pull down the piece of paper. “Oh, hey, it’s from Grandpa,” he said. “It says, ‘To my family. From Carl Pennoyer. I am eighty-three, but not mentally retarded. I have crossed streets for at least seventy-eight of my years without assistance and without trouble. I have never once been struck by a car and killed. If I had been, I would certainly have a newspaper clipping to that effect.’”

  “Jesus, that’s all I need this morning,” Mr. Pennoyer said. He took the piece of paper from Frankie’s hand and read it over again. “I suppose Pop thinks that’s funny.” He looked around at the family. “Anyone here laughs, I’ll crack him one. I swear, that’ll be it.”

  Later when Jenny told Rhoda about the message on the bulletin board, they both got hysterical over it. “Your grandfather is the greatest,” Rhoda said, still giggling. “I wish my grandfathers were like him, but ugh, they’re both so dull. Grandfather Rivers spends all his time repairing watches, and Grandfather Herman won’t even talk to me, hardly.”

  “He won’t?” Jenny was shocked and slightly delighted at this further proof (as if she needed it) of Grandpa’s uniqueness.

  “Grandfather Herman says he never liked children and being old hasn’t changed his opinion. Mother says never mind when I get to be about eighteen he’ll be interested in me. That’s when he got interested in her.”

  “Who can wait that long?” Jenny said. After eating supper at Rhoda’s house, they’d gone out to Jericho Park, fooled around, racing up the footpaths and chinning themselves from a tree. Now they were returning to Rhoda’s home.

  “Hello,” Rhoda called as they entered, “I’m back.” She and Jenny went into the Rivers’ living room where Mr. and Mrs. Rivers were watching TV.

  “Well, look at her with her blouse hanging out,” Mr. Rivers said. “Where has she been?”

  “Your blous
e hanging out like that doesn’t look very nice, Rhoda,” Mrs. Rivers said. She was a small woman with the same eager, interested face as her daughter. “Who have you been with, honey?”

  “Nobody but Jenny,” Rhoda said, tucking in her blouse.

  “Look at her, destroying the evidence,” Mr. Rivers teased. “I bet you were fooling around with a boy.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Rhoda said. “You know I don’t do that.”

  “We’ll just have to ask Jenny,” Mrs. Rivers said, smiling and joining in the teasing. “Jenny will tell us the truth, won’t you, Jenny?”

  “We just walked around,” Jenny said.

  “Who’d you see?” Mrs. Rivers said. “Your boyfriend? Or was it Jenny’s boyfriend?” She and Mr. Rivers both looked smilingly at Jenny. Jenny felt heat seeping into her face and neck.

  “Now that you mention it,” Mr. Rivers said, “seems to me Jenny Pennoyer’s shirt is also sort of rucked out of her jeans. Now look at that, look at her hurrying to set herself right.” Jenny felt her ears flaming. The Riverses were really nice, but they could always make her feel like a fool. She glanced at Rhoda, who was grinning. Rhoda was used to her parents.

  “Where did you walk around?” Mr. Rivers said. He was a tall, big-bellied man.

  “Jericho Park,” Rhoda said.

  “The park,” Mr. Rivers said, turning serious. “Rhoda, how many times have Mother and I told you it’s dangerous to go in the park after dark? There are all kinds of two-legged animals.”

  “It’s not really dark out yet,” Jenny said.

  “Oh, yes it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “I don’t want you going in the park alone, Rhoda.”

  “I was with Jenny.”

  “Jenny is a wonderful girl, but she’s not any protection for you, and you’re not any protection for her.”

  “We’re only thinking of you, honey.” Mrs. Rivers patted Rhoda on the behind. “You girls go wash up; you look all flushed and hot. Then you can have some milk and cookies and go on to bed.” She took one of Rhoda’s hands. “Your nails need cutting, honey. And your hair, I’ll have to trim your hair pretty soon; it’s getting shaggy.” She pulled Rhoda down to kiss her cheek. “Ummm, sweet! Oh, oh, is that a little pimpy I see developing on your chin? No picking now!”