by Betsy Byars
He was warming to the imitation when Harriet Haywood came up. “Cybil wants to know if you’re mad at her,” Harriet said to Simon.
Simon raised his head from the drinking fountain. Before he could answer, Tony asked, “What would he be mad at Ackerman for? What’d she do?”
“You know,” Harriet said, “for taking his part in the play, for getting to be Ms. Indigestion.”
“Oh, that.” Tony was plainly disappointed.
“Well, is he mad?”
Simon stood to the side, hand still on the water fountain, watching Harriet and Tony Angotti. He felt like a patient being discussed by a doctor and nurse.
“Well, sure he’s mad, Haywood,” Tony decided. “What d’you think? You think anybody in his right mind wants to be a macaroni pie?”
“Ajar of peanut butter,” Simon corrected.
“Whatever.” Tony warmed to the discussion. “Listen, Haywood, you go back and tell Cybil Ackerman Simon is mad. Tell her he’s plenty mad.”
“Well, I’ll tell her what you said—” Harriet began slowly, but Tony cut her off.
“You tell Cybil Ackerman he is so mad he said she ought to be a double Popsicle in the play with them legs of hers.”
Harriet gasped.
“Wait a minute. I didn’t say that.”
“Listen, this is between me and Haywood.” Tony had recently learned the pleasure of quarreling with girls, and he didn’t want to be interrupted.
“I will tell Cybil exactly what he said.” Harriet’s eyes had become smaller. “And don’t think I won’t, either.”
She turned so fast it was like a move out of a pro basketball game. She started down the hall. She was so upset over this insult to her best friend’s legs that her whole body was trembling.
“And you know what he said about you?” Tony called after her.
She slowed but did not glance around.
“He said it’s too bad there isn’t a tub of blubber in the play because that part would be perfect for you!”
Simon watched Harriet draw in a breath so deep he thought she was going to inflate herself. “Wait a minute, Harriet,” he called. Tony was laughing so hard he had to put one hand on Simon’s back to steady himself.
Harriet went directly to the girls’ restroom. She pushed the door open with such force that it swung back and forth five times—a school record.
Tony slapped Simon on the back. “I love it,” he said. “Old Popsicle legs and tub of blubber.” Again he leaned on Simon’s back for support.
Simon shrugged him off. The weight of his friend on his back seemed, unexpectedly, enough to send him to his knees in the hall. “Get off!”
Tony raised his hands. “I’m—Oh, here she comes, pal, and she has not forgotten and forgiven.”
Harriet came out of the restroom like a missile. There were two girls with her, and the three of them, in tight formation, seemed like an attack force out of Star Wars.
Simon and Tony stepped back against the wall to avoid injury. Tony was silenced for a moment, and then he stepped back into the middle of the hall, as they passed, and watched them.
“Hey, Haywood,” he called. “You know what Simon just said? He said them girls with you ought to be sacks of potatoes in the play.”
The sacks of potatoes stiffened, ruining the tight formation.
“Wait a minute,” Simon said. “I didn’t say any of that.”
Tony grinned with satisfaction as the girls attempted to go through the school door at the same time. “You can’t get three hamburgers in one bun,” he called cheerfully. Harriet turned. Her eyes were so slitted with anger that they were invisible.
“Now, I did not say that, Harriet,” Simon called. “I couldn’t have. I—”
“He’s just being modest. He thinks of these things and then don’t want credit. You be sure to tell Ackerman what he said about them legs.”
“I will,” Harriet called back. She slammed the door and went down the steps.
“She’ll tell, too,” Tony said happily. “She loves to blab. Remember that time I put the wastebasket upside down on Miss Ellis’s desk, and Miss Ellis came in, and before she even noticed the wastebasket, Harriet jumped up and said, Tony Angotti did it! Tony Angotti did it!’” He jumped up and down to demonstrate. Then he said, “Course I don’t have the flab she’s got. When Haywood jumps up and down, windows all over the school slam shut.”
“Why do you—” Simon began, but Tony interrupted.
“And then came victory. Miss Ellis said, ‘What did Tony do?’ And then she notices that there is a wastebasket upside down on her desk, oh, horrors! And before anyone can stop her, she picks up the wastebasket and trash falls all over her desk!”
In the silence that followed Tony’s laughter, Simon asked his question again. “Why do you do stuff like that?”
“Like what?”
“Lie!”
“Oh,” he said, shrugging. “Everybody in my family lies. You know that.”
“Well, quit lying about me!”
“Even my mom lies. The first thing she ever said to me that I can remember was a lie. She told me chocolate-covered cherries were medicine.”
“That’s different, Tony. That’s—”
“My mom would make a real bad face every time she ate one. It took me three, four years before I’d even try a chocolate-covered cherry. She also told me that if I made ugly faces my face would freeze like that and that if I sat too close to the TV I wouldn’t be able to see anything but black and white.”
Tony Angotti went on, happily listing his mother’s lies. Simon walked beside him in silence. His long friendship with Tony, which had brought him such pleasure in the early grades, seemed this year to be bringing him only discomfort. He walked more slowly. He had the uneasy feeling that he had been led, half-willingly, like a blinded horse, into a stream and abandoned. And now, blindfold lifted, he had to face the current alone.
“And my grandmother—talk about lies! My grandmother told me that if I wore my cousin Bennie’s shoes—which were two sizes too little—see, we were out in Wheeling and my uncle died and we all had to go to the funeral and I didn’t have any dark shoes. So she told me that if I wore my cousin Bennie’s shoes, something nice would happen because they were magic shoes. Can you believe that! And I put them on—can you believe that? And off I go to the funeral in my magic shoes—I could barely walk.” He began to limp comically. “The toes were pointy, Simon—they were like real little old men’s shoes!”
Simon smiled despite himself.
“And when I got home, I had blisters, them things were that big, and my grandmother—you know what she told me? She told me they were magic blisters and that if I didn’t pop them they would turn into silver dollars!”
“Did you pop them?” Simon asked.
“No!—well, yes, but only after Annette laughed at me. Anyway, that was lying.” Pride in the family trait showed in his face and voice. “I could never think of anything that good.”
Simon glanced at him and then back at his own feet, dragging along in his torn sneakers. His smile faded. “Yes, but you’re just getting started,” he predicted in a low voice.
“That’s true.” Tony nodded. “That is sooooo true.”
Let My Dad Kidnap Me
Simon entered the house and sighed with relief at being rid of Tony. Then he picked up the mail.
When there was a letter from his father—and there had been only four—he felt worse. In the first two letters his father was living on a boat off the coast of California; in the next two in a forest in Oregon. The letters were Robinson Crusoe descriptions of what he was eating and how he gathered wood and built fires and mended his clothes.
The letters made Simon hate the outdoors in the way he would hate a rival. And it seemed to Simon that nature had sensed his hate, just as a dog senses fear, and had sent poison ivy and wasps and pollen to retaliate.
He could imagine a Mother Nature who had thought up hurricanes and tornad
oes pointing in his direction, instructing her plants and insects with a smile. “Sic ’im!”
Today there was no letter. I should stop hoping for letters, he told himself. It was as useless as trying to get kidnapped in second grade. He had finally learned to smile about that now.
It was the first awful winter without his father, and Simon had seen a TV special about a father who had left, just like his father, and then the father had come back and kidnapped his own son!
The idea had almost made Simon stop breathing. Maybe at this very moment—the possibility made him put his hand on his chest, right over his pounding heart—maybe at this very moment his father was planning to kidnap him.
It was like suddenly learning there’s Christmas or television. There’s kidnapping.
It was odd. He could remember how in first grade they had had long lessons on the dangers of being kidnapped. Mr. Repokis had given them an oral quiz about it.
“Now if someone offered you an ice cream sundae with marshmallows, nuts, bananas, and decorettes, would you get in the car with them?”
“Noooooooo.”
“And if someone offered to give you a Barbie doll with a majorette suit and a light-up baton, would you get in the car with them?”
“Nooooooooo.”
“And if someone offered to give you a matchbox car with real headlights and a real engine, would you get in the car with them?”
They were all collecting matchbox cars then, and Barry Hoffman, overcome, had cried, “I would!” and they had to start all over again, because kidnapping was such a terrible thing.
Now it became Simon’s dream. Let my dad kidnap me, he prayed as he played dangerously near the road at recess. Let my dad kidnap me, he pleaded as he stood at the edge of the driveway. Let my dad kidnap me, he begged as he slowly passed a strange van parked down the street.
He was always at the edge of the street in those days, waiting for the feel of his father’s arms as he was lifted into the waiting van and driven away.
It was December before he finally gave up. It was such a cold month that his mom would not let him sit outside without his Yogi Bear face mask. Even he, with all his dreams, had to admit that it was unlikely he would be kidnapped in that attire.
A voice at the door said, “I forgot. I can’t go home till after the paaaaaarty.” It was Tony, speaking in his sister Annette’s voice.
“I’ll come out,” Simon said quickly, but before he could open the door, Tony was inside.
Tony came through a house like a pickpocket, opening drawers, picking up objects, glancing in envelopes, pulling out letters. He paused to glance through the Newtons’ mail.
“Nothing from your old man?”
“No.”
Tony looked with interest at a Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes Entry. “He must not have got his head together yet,” he commented.
“No.”
“Do you mind if I take this? I’d like to win some of this stuff—that boat, for instance.”
“There’s no lake around here.”
“Well, do you mind if I take it?”
“No!” Simon paused, then said calmly, “Let’s go outside.”
They went out and sat on the steps. Tony put his Sweepstakes Entry in his back pocket. “It’s not fair,” he said. “Why am I—a member of the family—kept out of my own home so that strangers can come in and eat cake?”
“Because you imitate your sister and her friends and spy on them,” Simon answered with unusual bluntness.
“Come on. When did I spy?”
“Last week.”
“Name me two other times,” He broke off and sighed. “Oh, never mind.” Suddenly he straightened. “Hey, here comes Haywood. What’s the Tub doing walking past your house?”
“Don’t call her that. Maybe she’s on her way somewhere. Lay off, will you?”
“Huh, she’s walking past your house for one reason. She wants to see you.”
“After what you said this afternoon, I would be the last person she’d want to see.”
“Listen, I know about walking past people’s houses. My sister Annette does it all the time. When she wants to see Rickie Wurts, she walks past his house, realllll slow, just like Haywood’s doing. Sometimes she pretends to be looking for something she’s lost. That way she can walk past ten, fifteen times until he comes out of the house.” He broke off to yell, “Haywood, where you going?”
Harriet turned her head and looked surprised to see them. Then she exhaled, giving the impression that the two of them were giving off an unpleasant odor.
“Come on,” Tony said. He grabbed Simon’s shirt and pulled him down the sidewalk to where Harriet was waiting at the edge of the street.
“Well, I didn’t expect to see you,” Harriet said. She lowered her eyes with the coldness of someone recently called a tub of blubber.
“It’s his house,” Tony said. “Why wouldn’t you expect to see him?”
“I just thought”—she was colder than ever now—“that after what you said today, the two of you would have the decency to stay out of my way.”
“We want to stay out of your way, Haywood,” Tony said, “only how are we going to do that when you come looking for us?”
“I was not looking for you!”
“She wasn’t looking for us, Tony,” Simon said.
“Listen, I know what’s happening here. I’ve got experience in these things.” Tony put up his hands. “Okay, Haywood, so while you weren’t looking for us, what were you going to tell us when you found us?”
“Nothing, except that I told Cybil what you said about her legs.”
Harriet was glancing from Simon to Tony now, including them both in the responsibility for the insult.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Haywood,” Tony said. “You keep things like that to yourself, you’ll end up in the funny farm.”
“And you know what she said about you?” She was looking right at Tony Angotti now, but Simon felt she was talking about him too.
“No, I don’t know what Popsicle Legs said about us and I don’t want to know.”
Simon said, “I do.”
Suddenly Harriet hesitated. She glanced from Tony to Simon. Simon could see that she wanted to tell them—indeed, she had walked all the way over here to tell them—but his eagerness made her change her mind.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said and started walking away.
Tony yelled, “Haywood, you mean you come all the way over here to see us, walk fifteen, twenty blocks, and we take pity on you and come down from the porch, and then you won’t tell us what Cybil said?”
“You got it,” Harriet said over her shoulder.
Simon and Tony watched her until she turned the corner. Then Tony said in a surprised voice, “I wonder what Cybil did say about us.”
“I don’t know.”
“It had to be an insult of some kind.”
“Of course.”
“But there’s nothing to insult!” He held out both hands to show he was hiding no flaws.
“Well, we’re not perfect,” Simon said.
Tony was silent while he went over a mental checklist of his body. “Really, there’s nothing to insult!”
“Maybe she said we’re lousy baseball players.”
“What kind of insult is that? We call her legs Popsicle sticks and she comes up with, ‘Well, you play poor baseball.’ Come on, if I know Cybil Ackerman, she said something a lot worse than that.”
“Yes, she could.”
Tony stood for a moment, looking up the street where Harriet had disappeared. Then he turned abruptly and said, “I’m going home.”
“It’s not five o’clock yet. Annette’s party isn’t over. You—”
“Right. I’ve got”—he checked his watch—“exactly twenty minutes to spoil eeeeeeverything.” He started down the sidewalk for home, then he turned. “And I’ll let you know tomorrow what Ackerman said about us.”
Tears and Ravioli
Simon went back into the house and looked in the kitchen. His mother sometimes left notes for him. “Put the casserole in the oven. Clean the celery.” Today the message was, “Defrost the chicken.” He took the package from the freezer. He was like a robot kitchen helper, he sometimes thought, who performed acts without understanding what he was doing.
He went back to the living room. The television was broken, so he sat doing nothing, hands dangling at his sides.
Simon and Tony were known as best friends. Their friendship had been sealed in second grade when the entire class was asked to write essays on their fathers.
Simon refused to write one, and Tony could not because his father had died when he was one year old. Tony could not even remember his father. So they had sat at their desks, both miserable, both staring at their dirty fingernails, while other children went to the front of the room and read happily, “My father is a dentist. He plays golf. He plays tennis. He has a new car.”
When the voting was held on the best paper—Billy Bonfili won because his father was the high school football coach—only Simon and Tony did not vote.
“You don’t have a father?” Tony asked after school. He had waited at the door to ask this, his long face intent.
“I have one,” Simon said carefully, “but he’s gone.” “Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“I had one but he’s dead.”
“Oh.”
And thus sealed together by a mutual loss rather than mutual interest, their friendship had begun. They walked together to Tony’s house.
“You like ravioli?” Tony asked at the edge of the walkway.
“I don’t know.”
“You never had ravioli?”
“No.”
“Well, come on!”
They went into Tony’s house, and Simon sat at the kitchen table. He watched while Tony heated the ravioli. He was looking down at his steaming plate, at the strange, soft squares, when Tony’s grandfather came in.
“You want some ravioli, Pap-pap?” Tony asked at the stove.
Pap-pap nodded, pulled out his chair, sat heavily. When the three of them were seated, plates full, Tony said, “He doesn’t have a father either.”
