Father's Arcane Daughter

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “In my case,” I said, “jealousy was a form of lesser pain.”

  “Less pain than what?” she asked.

  “Less pain than a broken heart.” “

  “How would you show jealousy in a comic strip?” she asked.

  “Why, I’d color myself green,” I said, laughing.

  DURING CHRISTMAS RECESS, breakfast was served whenever anyone wanted it. Three of our cooks had quit exactly a day and a half after Christmas envelopes.

  Caroline was sitting at the breakfast table when I came down to breakfast, and she waited while I set Cora in motion. I asked Caroline about some of the people who had come to the party. I mentioned that I had seen an old newspaper cutting where they had interviewed Bunny Waldheim when she had been Bunny Miller. I mentioned that they had also interviewed Agatha Trollope. “Everyone said that Caroline Carmichael was very nice,” I concluded.

  “Bunny’s nice, too,” Caroline said. “She’s invited me to her house. She is married and has a young family, and still she’s gone back to college to get a Ph.D.”.

  Heidi toddled to the table. She climbed onto a chair, her normally bumpy climb made even more so, being off balance from carrying, the Rubaiyat. The book already looked as if it had gone through a steam bath. She put the book on the table and leaned her head on one hand and put her thumb in her mouth. I began the silent treatment, but Caroline looked at Heidi and asked, “Did you enjoy the Rubaiyat?”

  Heidi took the thumb out of her mouth and nodded yes and then replaced her thumb.

  “Which poem did you like best?” Caroline asked.

  Heidi removed her thumb from her mouth, shrugged her shoulders and put her thumb back into her mouth.

  “Did you read them all?”

  Heidi removed her thumb from her mouth, nodded and put her thumb back into her mouth.

  “What were they about?”

  Heidi shrugged, thought a minute and said, “About how to be happy.”

  “I’ll bet you didn ’t even read them/’ I said.

  “I did, too,” she said, wiping her thumb on her skirt.

  Caroline opened the book and asked Heidi to read to her, and Heidi did. Caroline was more impressed than I thought she ought to be. Caroline leafed through the pages and picked out another verse at random.

  “Some for the Glories of this World. . . ” Heidi read.

  “Do you understand the poems?” Caroline asked.

  Heidi nodded yes. I saw that Caroline was examining Heidi in a new light; I didn’t like what I saw.

  “Liar!” I yelled at Heidi. I closed the book on her thumb and demanded, “Tell me what just one of them means.”

  Heidi rubbed her thumb and looked over at Caroline and then at me. She stuck her thumb back into her mouth and climbed down from the chair and, holding her book under her arm, galumphed away.

  “Chimpanzee!” I screamed. Then, trying to sound detached and amused, I said to Caroline, “She’s really nothing but a monkey, you know. The words don’t mean a blessed thing to her. You could teach a monkey to read the way she does. She recognizes the shapes of words the way an illiterate recognizes the shape of road signs.”

  Caroline said gently, “I think her ability to read is rather remarkable.”

  I felt my face grow red as I continued my argument, “You can’t really discuss anything with her, you know. The only thing she ever thinks about is getting her own way”

  “Maybe that is all she has ever been given to think about.” Caroline added in a gentle voice, “I think her ability to read shows something special. It means that the words are in her. A lot of non-Heidi words.” I knew I was blushing, fighting a very private rage of a kind that I remembered from when I was little, from the time when I had first had Heidi to consider. Caroline waited; she watched me choke up; jealousy is hard to swallow. Then she said, “Heidi has two drawbridges to let down before she can leave the castle.”

  THAT DAY MARKED the entrance of Heidi into the small incandescent world that I had marked off for Caroline and for me alone. Now, for the remainder of the winter holiday, whenever Mother was not at home—and that was often, for the Christmas season was full of parties—Heidi joined Caroline and me. Luellen and Cora were alternating days off, and we often ate dinner in the breakfast room, just the three of us.

  One day as the three of us sat at the table in the breakfast room, Heidi picked up a knife and made an effort at buttering a roll. She glanced up at Caroline and waited, and Caroline nodded, and then Heidi smiled that warm, wet, funguslike smile of hers. When I saw Caroline beaming her approval at those pitiful fingers working as if each were wrapped, in dryer lint, I felt a small surge of that green rage again.

  Several times Heidi tried to interrupt our conversations, but Caroline would-not allow that. So Heidi became a quiet listener, more a mascot than a pest. But as soon as Mother returned, Heidi became her old self. Cutsey, clinging and cuddling. Neither Caroline nor I said anything to Mother.

  Why?

  Why didn’t I tell Mother that Heidi was trying out normalcy. Perhaps because I had been taught that I was never to mention Heidi’s difference. Perhaps because I wanted to see how far Heidi would go, how far she could go. Perhaps because I felt it was Heidi’s right to tell whenever she chose to. Or perhaps, just perhaps, some hidden part of me wanted her to always be the golliwog.

  If Caroline had her own reasons for saying nothing to Mother, I never asked what they were.’ I never discussed it with Caroline. I. had been taught a habit of silence.

  JUST AS ALL STARS swell and grow especially luminous before they die, so it was with the planet Carmichael. It had swelled to include Heidi, and it had grown brighter as it had grown bigger, but it, too, was about to die. Caroline had chosen an apartment; she would move out with the new year.

  eight

  One of the buttons on her desk lit up; she threw a switch and her secretary announced over a conference phone speaker that the president of Hooton had called twice. “Oh” she said, “tell him he’ll have to wait. We’re about to get to Bunny Waldheim.” Then she threw the switch again, and all the buttons on her desk went dark. She held her fingers over her mouth for a time, gazing out over her desk. Her eyes at last focused on me. “What color,” she asked, “would you color Bunny Waldheim?”

  “Easy,” I answered. “In the sixties, I would have colored her beatnik; now, in the seventies, I would have to color her hippy. But then, when we first met her, I would have had to color her burgundy for that foyer and blue for her jeans. Burgundy and blue, I guess. And on that first day I would have colored her pink.”

  “Do you mean McCarthy pink? The famous Fifties pinko?”

  “Oh no. Not pink as a shade of Communist red. Baby fink”

  ’Yes,” she said. “I remember. There was that infant.”

  CAROLINE MOVED OUT the day that school resumed. I came home, hoping that something would have delayed her, hoping that she would still be there, but she wasn’t. Her new place was on Fifth Aveune, high up on a bluff overlooking the trolley tracks. She had chosen one of the first big apartment buildings that had replaced an old mansion. That evening she called to give me her new phone number and to invite me to visit whenever I wished. “Say hello to Heidi for me,” she said before hanging up.

  I didn’t. Phone calls were something I could have that Heidi. couldn’t; I ’d keep it that way for” a while.

  The first Thursday after Christmas recess I saw Caroline, waiting for me instead of Maurice. She had taken her driving test, and as part of his private celebration at having her (officially) back, Father had given her a car, a small car, a Hudson two door, gunmetal gray. I ran out, my math book slipping and bending the metal spiral of my notebook and causing marks like mice tracks to appear on the palm of my hand. I ran toward the car and stopped short. Heidi was in the front seat.

  “Get in back,” I said to Heidi.

  “Get in back yourself.”

  “Someone seeing your cretin face up front can cause an acci
dent.”

  “Yeah? Then how come I don’t cause any accidents when I ride up front with Maurice?”

  “Because ‘Maurice is the only person in Pittsburgh with a face funnier than yours.”

  “Then we should have double accidents. Double. Double. Double. Double. Double; Double.”

  “Heidi,” I yelled. “Shut up, or I’m going to stuff my shirt sleeve into your mouth—with my arm in it. Now move over. We’ll all three sit up front.”

  Heidi bumped her way over to the middle of the front seat, and I climbed in beside her. I looked over at her, and I said, “You stink!”

  And Heidi answered, “If I stink, I don’t know how a snot-nose like you can smell me.”

  I laughed. I had to hand her that round.

  Caroline laughed, too. I know now that the name calling and the name answering that happened that afternoon represented progress. I did not hide my feelings, and Heidi did not hide behind Mother’s skirts. We argued as a brother and a sister should; we argued as equals. I got into the front seat, jabbing Heidi as much as I could with my elbows, and making a huge pretence of adjusting my books. Heidi poked me back, and that, too, was brotherly and sisterly.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Caroline.

  “To Bunny Waldheim’s ”

  BUNNY WALDHEIM lived on Centre Avenue in a section of town that had no name; it wasn’t Schenley or Oak land or Squirrel Hill. Just Centre Avenue, a combination of big old houses and small new apartments. Bunny lived on the first floor of one of the big old houses. The entrance foyer was painted burgundy red and there were three doors leading from it.

  Caroline rang the doorbell of the first door to the right, and Bunny Waldheim answered. She was wearing blue jeans and carrying an infant that could only be described as half-naked. Bottom half.

  “Hi!” Bunny Waldheim said, “c’mon in.” Then she called, “Simon! Rosalie! Come, they’re here.”

  Two little kids, the older one a boy, came out of the back of the house, into the living room. Bunny Waldheim put the baby into a playpen, which was set up in the dining room. (It was a girl, and I looked more than was sophisticated.) Bunny Waldheim leaned down to the playpen and very efficiently diapered the baby. She stood up and said, “Now!” Then she reached out her hand and said, “Hi, Winston. Hi, Heidi.”

  I wasn’t certain that women were supposed to shake hands without washing right after diapering a baby girl. I wasn’t certain that women were supposed to shake hands at all; it seemed foreign to me—like an Italian movie. But I shook her hand. Heidi wouldn’t. Heidi sucked her thumb and held onto Caroline’s skirt at the same time, as if she was receiving current and plugging it in.

  “How about some milk and cookies?” Bunny Waldheim asked.

  Caroline answered for us and said that would be fine. Bunny Waldheim washed her hands before putting the cookies (Oreos and Nabisco vanilla wafers) on a plate. Also, I was glad to note that the glass that she poured the milk into was not too badly smudged and only on the outside toward the bottom. I needed to use the bathroom, but I didn’t feel safe about that yet. I feared that Bunny Waldbeim’s bathroom might be as bad as Wardhill’s just before school let out. It could be worse. It could have tiny curly hairs in the bathtub and embarrassing things showing in the medicine cabinet. And worst of all: wet diapers, smoldering.’!, thought it best to hold my water, for I wanted very much to like Bunny Waldheim, and I already had had to overlook her naked baby.

  Just then the baby in the playpen ‘began to whimper, and Bunny Waldheim gave her a pacifier saying, “Her mother had an exam today, and her baby-sitting arrangements fell through, so I volunteered to help out.”

  When I heard her say that, I immediately asked if I could please use the bathroom.

  I returned, thinking that we, Bunny Waldheim and I, could be very good friends, after all.

  Bunny Waldheim asked Heidi if she would like to read a story to Simon. She gave her The Wind in the Willows. Heidi took it without a single hint that it was not a particular favorite of hers and sat down on the sofa with Simon on her left and Rosalie on her right and began.

  While Heidi read, we three sat at the dining room table and partly listened and partly talked. Bunny Waldheim seemed to listen to Heidi’s reading as if she had never heard the story before.

  Caroline asked, “Do you see much of our Miss Agatha Trollope?”

  Bunny Waldheim answered, “After getting over being furious at her for giving me a high school diploma without teaching me that water does not run uphill simply because I want it to, I called her and admitted that I had had a pretty good education. It had prepared me to be flexible, adaptable. I don’t think we can ask for much’more than that. She was pleased and asked me what I was doing. I told her, She sometimes calls on me now to test some of her students. I always donate my services, my alumna contribution.”

  “She still frightens me,” Caroline said. “I think. . . ” She didn’t finish because Bunny Waldbeim’s head had turned toward the living room, and so then did Caroline’s. Heidi had stopped reading.

  Heidi appeared in the archway between the living room and the dining room, her thumb marking her place in the book. “Your little girl won’t sit still, and she keeps smelling the book.”

  “All right, Heidi,” Bunny Waldheim said, gathering Rosalie to her. “How would you like to draw? Would you like to draw a picture of a man for me?” Bunny Waldheim asked.

  “I do ladies better,” Heidi said. She sat at the dining room table and grabbing the pencil in her fist as if she were holding a full-sized flagpole, she drew. Drew what? Drew a something that she called a lady. “It never comes on the paper the way it is in my head,” she said. Then she tipped her head and pooched out her lips: her precious look.

  The precious look was lost on Bunny Waldheim who held up the picture and shook her head and said, “Yeah! that’s pretty bad.”

  Heidi’s face fell so fast that I thought I could hear it. Her thumb was into her mouth in an instant, and she came over and stood by my chair. I put my arm around her.

  I couldn’t remember ever having done that except the time we were having our portrait painted, and the artist had required it.

  WE WENT to Bunny Waldheim’s the next Thursday, and the Thursday after that, too. One Thursday she played a record, Beethoven it was, and she watched Heidi while the record played. Another time she had a set of special blocks and asked Heidi to arrange them according to a picture she showed her. Heidi did that with little trouble.

  When Heidi was in the next room with Simon and Rosalie, Bunny Waldheim asked Caroline, “Can’t you bring her earlier? I need a whole day.”

  “How about a Saturday?” Caroline asked. “I’ll arrange with Sister Clothilde, her piano teacher.”

  “Piano lessons?” Bunny Waldheim asked.

  Caroline nodded.

  And Bunny Waldheim said, “Poor, poor baby.” Then she remembered that I was there. She’ raised her eyebrows: a question. I nodded: my answer. She knew that I wouldn’t tell.

  * * *

  CAROLINE MADE UP a story about a party at Bunny Waldheim’s, a very small, very exclusive party. Mother only knew of Bunny as Bunny Miller of the Aluminum Millers. Caroline never mentioned Centre Avenue or the burgundy-painted foyer or the half-naked baby, and neither did I.

  On the way there, Caroline explained to Heidi that Bunny Waldheim wanted to see her alone and that we would pick her up at three thirty. Heidi’s thumb shot straight into her mouth, and she shook her head no. No-no. No-no. No-no. The back of her head rubbed the back of the seat so hard that I expected the upholstery to show a worn spot.

  Caroline pulled the car onto a side street and said, “Heidi, look at me. I want to talk to you.” Heidi would not look at Caroline, and Caroline lifted Heidi’s face by the chin. Heidi closed her eyes. “Winston,” Caroline said in exasperation, “please make her listen.”

  I reached over from the back seat and landed a chop in the crook of Heidi’s arm. Her thumb left her m
outh with the sound of a stopper being pulled from a drain. She looked back at me, and whatever she had wanted to say wouldn’t come. Instead she burst out crying.

  “You know Bunny Waldheim isn’t going to hurt you,” I said. “She just wants to get to know you better.”

  “I’m not afraid she’s going to hurt me,” Heidi answered.

  “Well, what in the name of Pittsburgh’s gray skies are you afraid of?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Heidi answered.

  “You’re not crying like that for nothing,” I insisted. “Are you scared of being left without someone from the family?”

  Heidi shook her head no.

  “Do you want me to call Bunny and cancel?” Caroline asked, gently.

  “No,” Heidi answered. She stared out the windshield, wiping her nose with her hand, and said, “I’ll go through with it.”

  I said, looking at the back of her hand, “I hope that’s not the thumb you suck. You must eat a pint of snot every week,” I muttered.

  Heidi didn’t even respond. She continued looking out front, and Caroline patted her knee, the way she had once patted mine, the day we picked the aubergine. Caroline said, “Brave girl.”

  Caroline, Heidi and I all knew the real purpose of the visit to Bunny Waldheim’s and each of us was fearful of the findings, each to a different degree. Each for a different reason.

  We took Simon and Rosalie to the Highland Park Children’s Zoo. As we drove north on Negley Avenue, Caroline pointed out a house on the right-hand side of the road, near where Negley ended, and said that it belonged to Miss Trollope.

  “Have you visited her since the reception?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered. “I know I’ll have to some day, but…”

  “Let’s go now,” I suggested.

  Caroline laughed. “If Miss Trollope wants to visit the zoo, she need only walk out her door. I don’t think she’d regard it kindly if we brought the zoo to her.” She tilted her head toward the back seat, toward Simon and Rosalie.

  “Yeah,” I answered. But I sensed something unnatural in Caroline’s voice. I filed that sound with Caroline’s reaction at the reception.