A Figure of Speech

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “How can you be so dumb?” Mr. Pennoyer banged his hand on the table. “I want you to stay in school! You don’t have to drop out because she does. That’s her problem!”

  “Dad, I just told you—”

  “I heard you, damn it!”

  “Frank, don’t get upset,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “You’re shouting. There’s no need to shout.”

  Mr. Pennoyer tugged at the collar of his flannel shirt. “Okay, okay, I’m calm. Now listen to me, Vince, you think you’ll go back to college, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got everything ass backward. Things happen—”

  “Dad, we’ve figured—”

  “Vince, I know!” Mr. Pennoyer raised his voice. “Kids have big plans, but nature gets in the way.” He pointed a finger at Valerie. “Before you turn around she’ll have a baby and that’ll be the end of all your fine plans.”

  “No, Mr. Pennoyer, that isn’t going to happen to us.” Valerie put the gift-wrapped package on her lap and fussed with the ribbon, smoothing it out. “Definitely not.”

  “Babies come,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “You ever heard that saying, the best laid plans of mice and men? Babies will knock all your plans into a cocked hat! They come whether you want them or not! Amelia, tell this son of yours I’ve been working my head off for him for years, and now he wants to throw it all away like it’s nothing.”

  “Are you going to kick us out, Dad?” Vince said. “Are you going to tell me to go live someplace else? Because if that’s what you want, it’s okay with me!”

  “Now, Vince,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “We’re not going to turn our backs on you. Calm down. Your father just got upset. Frank, tell Vince we’re not turning our backs on him.”

  Mr. Pennoyer drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m not taking back anything I said, but you’re my son, and that means I stick by you no matter what you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t committed a crime, Dad.”

  There was a tense silence. Mrs. Pennoyer poured herself a cup of coffee, then sat down. Jenny brushed brownie crumbs off the table. Valerie cleared her throat. “Mrs. Pennoyer—” She pushed the wrapped box toward Mrs. Pennoyer. “This is a present for you and your family from your new daughter-in-law.”

  Mrs. Pennoyer looked at the box. “Really, you shouldn’t have—”

  “Open it, Mom,” Jenny said.

  Mrs. Pennoyer pulled off the ribbon, wound it neatly, then carefully unwrapped the gold paper. “Such nice wrappings,” she murmured. Jenny leaned forward. Mrs. Pennoyer folded the tissue paper, smoothing it out, put the ribbon on top, then opened the box and looked inside. “Oh, my,” she said, lifting out a narrow blue plastic container with gold lettering across the bottom. “An electric toothbrush,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. She lifted off the container cover to disclose the blue plastic electric brush holder and four tiny toothbrushes, each a different color and each sealed in clear plastic.

  “An electric what?” Mr. Pennoyer said. “What the hell kind of present is that?”

  Valerie’s lips pinched together. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Don’t be so rough, Dad!”

  “My parents have one,” Valerie said. “They like it. They said they didn’t even realize they were brushing all wrong till they got it.”

  Mr. Pennoyer tapped his two large front teeth. “The day I get too old or too lazy to hold my own toothbrush and swish it back and forth on my teeth a few times you can take me to the old peoples’ home and leave me there. Amelia, you got that? The old folks’ home!” His voice was loud and angry, and Jenny felt sorry for Vince and Valerie, being on the receiving end of all that anger. All they’d done was fall in love and get married. She was impressed, though, with the way Valerie was taking her father’s temper. She sat there, not saying a word, smiling faintly, altogether cool as a cucumber.

  Chapter 7

  “The love birds are sleeping on the couch,” Jenny told Rhoda while hashing over the brand-new situation in the Pennoyer household.

  “Is it one of those couches that pull out into a bed?” Rhoda asked. There was an envious note in her voice. “Your family is cool. Nothing like that could ever happen in my family.”

  “The whole house is a disaster area,” Jenny said. “Wait till you see it, you won’t recognize it.”

  The Pennoyer living room had always been a cozy place, stuffed with upholstered chairs, side tables, lamps, Mrs. Pennoyer’s upright piano, and a big soft-looking couch. There were red curtains at the windows and bright red velvet pillows with tassels on either end of the couch. Clay pots of ferns and other green plants were crowded on a heavy mahogany table sitting in the bay window that faced the street. The room had always been a family gathering place. Jenny and Gail did their homework in there; Mrs. Pennoyer picked out her odd tunes on the piano; everyone watched TV. But with Vince and Valerie sleeping on the couch, the room no longer belonged to the family.

  Sometimes now, Jenny reported, the couch wasn’t cleared of blankets and sheets until nearly time for it to be made into a bed again. There were overflowing suitcases and duffel bags on the chairs, shoes, boots, and sneakers everywhere, sweaters flung on the piano, and Vince’s sweat socks in odd places collecting dustballs. On top of the TV were tissues, brushes, combs, keys, and a collection of pink, yellow, and green plastic bottles containing variously Vince’s hair lotion and deodorant, and Valerie’s hand cream and lemon-scented cologne.

  Books were stacked haphazardly in piles on the floor, there were two tennis rackets leaning in a corner, suitcases on the piano bench, and Valerie’s collection of stuffed plush cats (which she’d had since childhood) regarded the family with glassy-eyed indifference from the top of the couch.

  “Stuffed cats,” Jenny said, “like Ethel’s ‘Fuzzy.’ I thought when you got married you grew up and forgot all that stuff.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I can see saving favorite things,” Rhoda said. She slept with a worn white stuffed dog every night. “Valerie sounds nice.”

  “She’s all right,” Jenny said neutrally. The truth was she hadn’t made up her mind about Valerie yet. Sometimes she liked her, sometimes she didn’t. “We’re all ready to kill her in the mornings, I can tell you that, Rhoda.” Valerie was an early riser and a bathroom hog. Although she wasn’t yet working, she got up when everyone else did, and four mornings out of five managed to slither into the bathroom before anyone else. But instead of whisking through her morning clean-up and getting out, she took a long shower without which, she said, she couldn’t face the day.

  “What’s she got to face, that’s what I want to know,” Jenny said. “Me, I’ve got to face teachers. Dad has to face customers, and Mom has to face dishes and diapers.”

  “You’re just having trouble getting adjusted to someone else in your house,” Rhoda said wisely.

  “You should hear what goes on now in the morning. Talk about yelling and screaming. This morning Frankie and I collided on the stairs going down to Grandpa’s apartment. We each had the same brainstorm at the same time, to use Grandpa’s toilet and sink. Poor Grandpa. I don’t think he knew what hit him when we came flying in like that.”

  “It sounds like fun to me,” Rhoda said.

  “You’re nuts, you know that,” Jenny said. “It’s only fun when you see something like that on TV. And it isn’t only mornings. Dinnertime with all of us crowded around the table, all squeezed together, with all those elbows and hands and gimmee and grabbing and all those dishes and silverware and bowls of food—it’s too much!”

  “Well, it’s probably only for a little while,” Rhoda said. “They’ll get their own place, won’t they?”

  Jenny shook her head. “No, that would be stupid. They have to save money, that’s the whole point of being home. As soon as Valerie gets a job, they’ll be banking two paychecks.”

  Vince had gone to work almost immediately in the Big K where Mr. Pennoyer was assistant manager. Every morning an
d night Valerie read the want ads and whenever a job sounded like a good possibility she followed up on it. The rest of the time she hung around the house eating fruit and drinking tea, taking all of Vince’s pictures out of the family photo albums, and listening to music, plugged in with earphones to Vince’s tape deck. At intervals she made forays into the bathroom and the kitchen, leaving behind her a scattered trail of crumpled, perfumed tissues, stained teacups balancing precariously in odd places, and fruit pits wrapped neatly in napkins.

  “Why do you do this?” Jenny asked one Saturday morning, pointing to one of Valerie’s napkin-wrapped fruit pits.

  “Do what?” Valerie was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, a book propped open in front of her, while Jenny did the morning dishes before going out for a walk with Grandpa.

  “Wrap fruit pits up like presents,” Jenny said.

  “Do I do that?” Valerie laughed. “That’s cute of me.”

  “It’s weirdo,” Jenny said. “Why can’t you just throw them in the garbage, bare?”

  “Oh, Jenny, now don’t try to make a big Freudian thing out of this,” Valerie said. “We all have our little funny-farm habits. What’s yours?”

  “I’m normal,” Jenny said. “No vices. Don’t smoke dope, don’t swear, don’t cheat on tests at school.”

  “Dull, dull, dull,” Valerie teased. “I recommend you take up wrapping fruit pits in napkins.”

  That was one of the times, Jenny told Rhoda, when she actually liked her sister-in-law. Other times she wasn’t so sure—there was something very cool and a little bit hidden about Valerie. Or so she thought, anyway. Vince, obviously, didn’t share her opinion, and her mother seemed to have become quite fond of Valerie. In fact, it was her mother who was most embarrassed by the lack of privacy Vince and Valerie had to suffer. That was why she kept changing things. That was why Frankie had to switch places with Vince and Valerie. He got the living room, and they got his bedroom, complete with bureau, posters, and bunk beds.

  “Bunk beds,” Vince said at breakfast. “Bunk beds! Ye gads, I haven’t had to sleep in a bunk bed since I went to camp the summer I was ten. I’m a married man now.”

  “We tried sleeping on one of them together,” Valerie said, “but it doesn’t work. They’re so narrow, they aren’t made for two people.”

  “Who gets the bottom bunk?” Gail asked.

  “We take turns,” Valerie said, making a face.

  The duffels, sweat socks, stuffed cats, and plastic bottles were now distributed around Frankie’s room, but the family was still not in possession of the living room. Now it was Frankie’s room and he showed no inclinations to share it with anyone. He left his jeans and underwear in the middle of the rug or hanging from a lamp, argued with everyone about which TV shows they could watch, and infuriated his father by asking him not to smoke in there, as the fumes were bad for his lungs, which he meant to keep in good shape for running.

  No one was terribly satisfied with the way things were, and gradually everyone became more than a little edgy. One morning Gail was practically in tears because Valerie had kept the bathroom so long that Gail hadn’t had time to put on the eye shadow she could apply only under the bright bathroom light.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Valerie said, sweeping out in a white terrycloth robe, her hair turbaned up in a towel. She gave Gail a hug. “Anyway, you don’t need make-up on your eyes.”

  “Yes, I do. My eyes look naked without it. Why can’t you get up later!”

  “I believe in getting up with my husband,” Valerie said. “I told you I was sorry!”

  That same night, Vince and Mr. Pennoyer got into a heated argument over a mistake Vince had made at work. Grandpa tried to conciliate and was told by Mr. Pennoyer to butt out, and Jenny, leaping to her grandfather’s defense, was called a big mouth and sent from the table. Furiously, she took her plate into the kitchen and swept the contents into the garbage pail.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with this family,” she heard her mother say. “It’s one uproar after another.”

  It sure is, Jenny agreed silently. She leaned against the kitchen counter, listening to the voices, the clatter of silver and dishes, and Ethel banging on her highchair tray.

  “Stepping on each other’s feet day and night,” Mrs. Pennoyer went on. “The house is a mess all the time. I feel like I’m living in the eye of a hurricane.”

  “That’s the calm place, Ma,” Vince said.

  “Well, you know what I mean! Everything’s upside down. I’m getting so nervous I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”

  “I don’t like that,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “Amelia, you’ve got to take it easier—”

  “It’s all my fault,” Valerie said. “Mine and Vince’s.” It was a humble-sounding statement, but Jenny, peering in from the kitchen, saw that Valerie didn’t look at all humble. Thoughtful, maybe. Determined, maybe. But humble? No!

  “There must be some better way to work things out,” Valerie said.

  “I wish there was,” Mrs. Pennoyer said, “but I haven’t been able to think of it.”

  Chapter 8

  “What are you doing down here?” Jenny said. Coming home from school, she’d discovered Valerie in Grandpa’s apartment. “Where’s Grandpa?”

  “Your grandfather’s gone for a walk, Jenny.” Standing in the middle of the room, Valerie had her hands in the pockets of her slacks. “I’m just looking around here, thinking about things. You know, this is potentially a darling little place. Really cute.”

  “Cute,” Jenny said. There was nothing cute about Grandpa, and there was nothing cute about the way he lived.

  “The paint is old and scrungy-looking now,” Valerie said, “but that’s nothing. Fresh paint is easy and would do miracles here.” She paced off the floor. “And a nice bright linoleum—” She went into the cubicle and flushed the toilet. “Something could be done here, too,” she called to Jenny. “A bright yellow gloss on the walls to add light, and a fluffy cover on the throne seat in—oh, raspberry, or some other really warm shade. And a picture on the wall.”

  Jenny stood at the door of the cubicle. “Pictures on the john wall. Who’d want that?”

  Valerie put up her hands like a frame. “Me! It would be something different. Maybe even this whole wall full of stuff—cartoons and line drawings, that sort of thing. I like that, Jenny. The flush box in the middle of art work. It’s a giggle.” She pushed past Jenny. “Also this entire place is crying out for plants, especially that window.” She pointed to the street level window above the metal table. “That window really knocks me out. It’s great, and totally neglected. Geraniums in the window boxes, masses of them. Don’t you think so, Jenny?”

  “Grandpa likes things plain, just the way they are,” Jenny said. She took the deck of cards from the sideboard, sat down at the table, and laid out a game of solitaire. “Anyway, why are you bothering to figure all this out? Grandpa won’t change anything. It’s been just like this ever since I can remember.”

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Valerie said. “Want to hear?”

  Jenny looked up from her card game. “Sure.”

  “I think this apartment would be perfect for Vince and me,” Valerie said. “In the middle of the night last night I woke up and realized this was the perfect solution.”

  Jenny stared at her sister-in-law. It was strange—Valerie was speaking plainly, but for a moment Jenny couldn’t relate the sounds to any sense. Then she shook her head, as if clearing her ears of water. “Where would Grandpa go?” she said.

  “Listen, this is the beautiful part of it,” Valerie said. “There’s a place for everyone. Vince and I will come down here, and your grandfather will go upstairs with Frankie.”

  “Grandpa with Frankie?” Jenny saw that she was losing at solitaire and gathered up the cards. “I think the whole idea is crazy,” she said.

  Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you go out and play?” she said. “You
r grandfather probably won’t be back for a while.”

  “I’ll wait for him.” Jenny laid out the cards again and put a red queen on a black king.

  Valerie wandered around the apartment, touching things, and humming under her breath. “I’m really surprised at your parents letting your grandfather live alone down here,” she said. She kicked lightly at one of the stacks of yellowed newspaper piled against the wall. “That’s a fire hazard, a real fire hazard.” She opened a drawer in the sideboard and poked among the things there. “He’s got so much old junk—”

  “That’s a private drawer!” Jenny said.

  Valerie closed the drawer. “You’re a regular little mother hen about your grandfather, aren’t you? I notice at the dinner table how you’re always watching him, picking up his fork if he drops it, stuff like that.”

  Jenny slapped down a card, black two on red three. Hold out the ace of hearts. She watched Valerie looking with that measuring look in her eyes. How had she ever thought she liked Valerie? Now she didn’t like her at all. No, not at all! Valerie was small boned, short, almost frail looking, but Jenny sensed now that there was something strong as steel inside her. Well, I’m strong, too, Jenny thought, and so is Grandpa. Absently she put a red ten on a black jack. She’d never thought of herself as strong before and suddenly had an image of herself with a lance taller than she, barring the way to Grandpa’s apartment while Valerie and Vince futilely tried to get past her. Past her? Muscles Pennoyer? She giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Valerie said.

  “Nothing,” Jenny said.

  “I don’t like that sarcastic smile,” Valerie said. “I thought I could count on you, Jenny.”

  “Count on me—for what?”

  “To be somebody with some understanding,” Valerie said. “The rest of this family—” She tossed the two heavy ponytails she wore over her shoulders. “Well, except for Vince, of course—oh, never mind. But I’m going to speak to your father about this apartment,” she said, going to the door. “I’m going to speak to him tonight.”