by Jane Smiley
I was going to tell her about Ned, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “I think Sissy was watching Gee Whiz jump, and that’s why she did such a good job.”
“You did a good job, too. You prepared for the turns. You aimed straight for the fences. You sat up when you needed to, and you went with the motion.”
“I know, but…” I remembered my manners. I said, “Thank you, but did Sissy learn?”
We walked along. The trail got a little narrow, so I fell behind, and I thought Abby had forgotten my question until we were untacking, and she said, “I think she did learn. I mean, everyone knows they watch each other and do what the others are doing. If Gee Whiz finds a great place to roll—nice and muddy—some of the others go right to that place after he’s finished and get nice and muddy, too. When one of them snorts and looks up at something, others will do the same. In the mare pasture, all of them pay attention to what Happy is doing, but not so much to what Sissy is doing, so that shows something. I’m not sure that a mare would pay attention to a gelding, but Gee Whiz is older and bigger and more self-confident than Sissy, so maybe. Anyway, I learn stuff from them, and what I learn is that not everything grown-ups tell you about horses is right.” And then she grinned, and then I heard the gravel crunch in the driveway.
When Dad was driving me home, I told him about some of my lessons, but not all of them. I said that I’d worked very very hard, though. He said, “No surprise there.”
This is what happened after we got home. Dad cooked some hot dogs on the barbecue, which I like much better than boiled hot dogs, and then Mom and I took Joan Ariel for a long walk—down to the department store, along the beach, back up to Grandma and Grandpa’s, where we ate some banana bread just out of the oven and talked about where we would have dinner Sunday night, and what we would have, and I asked if there could be a vote about that, but no one answered me. Then we kept walking because Joan Ariel fell asleep and Mom said that she had to burn off that banana bread, so we went up a steeper hill than we usually do, and it was a cool day. When we got home, I started reading the atlas again, on the coffee table, but then I lay back on the sofa and fell asleep, and no one woke me up until dinner, which was chicken soup with dumplings, and by nine o’clock, everyone was in bed and sound asleep except me. I was wide, wide awake, and I had absolutely nothing to do. I sat in my room for a while, looking out the window at the moon, which was now full, and then at some clouds that began to come in, and finally, I did something I’d never done before—I tiptoed downstairs and turned on the TV. It was just time for something called the late movie, and guess what? The movie was about a horse, and was called National Velvet, and it was exactly the movie I would have wanted to watch, because it was exactly about whether a horse could be your friend or not.
There are some strange things in the movie. One is that the girl’s name is Velvet and she has a sister named Malvolia, and I have never known anyone with either of those names. The horse is named The Pie, which made me think of Sophia’s horse, Pie in the Sky. The horse in the movie looks a little like Gee Whiz—big and long-legged, but bright chestnut with four white stockings, not gray. And Velvet is a little like Abby, I mean that she doesn’t seem to care how fast she goes, and a little like me, because she can’t stop talking and wishing she had a horse. There’s a trainer who is about the same size as Velvet, and, as Grandma would say, he leads her astray, because after she wins the horse in a raffle, he gets her to believe that she can ride this horse in a huge race and of course win, because whoever is the star always wins in the movies, even though in a horse show lots of different people win, and sometimes you like them and sometimes you don’t. The horse lives right by her house, but she never cleans his stall and she never cleans her tack.
I was about three-quarters into the movie when Dad came downstairs, and he wasn’t mad. He got himself a glass of milk and sat down, and then he said the funniest thing—he said, “You know where they filmed that, don’t you?”
I said no. “But the Grand National is in England, and all those people have English accents.”
“They do, but it was made at the end of the war, so they didn’t film it in England, they filmed it around here. Out at the stables. Look at the backgrounds.” And so I did, almost more than I looked at Velvet and The Pie, and sure enough, I knew I’d been there. It was strange to see all of that in black and white, and also on the television.
I said, “Did she really ride in that race?”
“No. The movie started out as a book, and it was made up, and then when they made the movie, they had a stunt double do the riding. You can’t put the star in danger. She’s too valuable.”
“She seems a little hysterical to me. I would rather be a stunt double.”
“Hysterical?” Dad laughed. “It is true that I have never seen you be hysterical. I think ‘dedicated’ is your word.” Then he said, “Of course you would want to be the stunt double.”
We watched to the end of the movie. The only other thing he said was that he wished he could afford a color TV. He didn’t ask me even one time why I wasn’t in bed. And he didn’t tell me to go to bed when it was over at twelve-thirty in the morning. I just yawned and went to bed, and in fact, I fell right asleep, and when I got up, it was ten o’clock, and there was a note on the kitchen table saying that everyone had gone to church, and my breakfast was in the oven and don’t forget to use a hot pad, and I didn’t. I ate bacon and a waffle and threw away the eggs, and everything was so quiet that I would have said I could hear the waves hitting the beach at the bottom of the hill, but no one was around, so I didn’t say it, and I also didn’t say the waves were so big that they curled up over the department store and swept cars into the bay. But it was an interesting idea. I thought some more about National Velvet. I didn’t see how it answered my question about whether a horse could be your friend. Velvet says lots of things about The Pie and how she loves him and how great he is, but he never looks at her, or comes up to her, or whinnies to her. He seems more like Tater than like Ned—a good horse who knows what he is supposed to do and does it. I wished I could watch the movie over and over, the way you can read a book, but you can’t. If it comes to your theater or on TV, there you are, but you have no way to ask or to order.
Grandma and Grandpa came a little early, and they brought a big piece of salmon, fresh out of the ocean, caught by a friend of Grandpa’s who fishes a lot even though he isn’t a professional fisherman. Mom put away the chicken she was making and put the salmon in the oven. I like salmon, so I decided to sit at the table with my mouth shut, and wait for it to bake—it smelled good, and anyway, there were chocolate cupcakes that I enjoyed looking at, too. Grandma was bouncing Joan Ariel on her knee and making faces. She does one thing where she closes her eyes and her mouth and says, very quietly, “One, two, three,” and then she opens her mouth and her eyes as wide as she can and exclaims, “Oh, my goodness me!” and Joan Ariel starts laughing and laughing. I do, too. Mom says that I always laughed at that one when I was Joan Ariel’s age.
For about ten minutes, I thought everything was fine, and then I started paying attention. I could tell that Mom and Grandma were talking about that thing no one will tell me about. Mom said, “I promise you we aren’t going there.”
“It’s such a good opportunity.” Grandma sounded really sad.
“I promise you.”
I said, “What are you promising?”
Mom put her hands on her hips, and Grandma made Joan Ariel laugh again. I decided that the best plan was to say nothing.
Mom went back to making lemon butter for the salmon.
Then Grandma said, like she just couldn’t help herself, “Don’t do this for us.”
Mom shook her head and checked the salmon. We were quiet for a long time, so I got kind of jumpy and said in a loud voice, “Ruthie disappeared.” Actually, she hadn’t, but she had been so quiet on Thursday and Friday that she
might as well have. Mom said, “I saw their stuff being moved. The man who lives on the bottom floor and owns the house, he was helping them. There wasn’t much of it. One load.”
Grandma said, “That must be a furnished place.”
Mom said, “Must be.”
I said, “Do you know where she’s going?”
“No one does. Her aunt hasn’t said a word about it to anyone.”
I said, “I hope they move to Montreal.”
Mom said, “Do you mean ‘Mon-tree-all’?”
“Yeah.” I had pronounced it “Mont-reel,” the way it is spelled.
Grandma said, “You are a reader. For years, I thought you were supposed to pronounce ‘often’ as ‘off-ten.’ Your grandpa was the first person to correct me.”
Mom said, “This is ready.”
I carried the baked potatoes into the dining room.
It wasn’t till I was in my bed with my door open into the hall and my ears wide that I heard anything else. Mom said something I couldn’t understand, and Dad said, “Well, I don’t think you should have made that promise.”
Mom said something, and then Dad said, a little louder, “I haven’t decided.”
Then Mom said, loud enough for me to hear, “We haven’t decided.”
“Sounds like you have! And anyway, we have to do something! This can’t last!”
Then Mom said, “Shhh,” and I knew she knew I was awake. I slid down under my blanket and put my pillow over my head.
The next day at school, Ruthie was gone. She was not at her desk, and when I lifted her desktop, I saw that the inside was empty. When I asked Mr. Nathan on the way to lunch where she’d gone, he shook his head and waved his hands. Melanie didn’t know, either.
I went to the school library to see if they had National Velvet, but Miss Perkins said that it had been checked out in 1962 and never returned, and she couldn’t read the handwriting of the person who’d checked it out, so there was no way to find it. I thought about walking to the public library on the way home from school, but even though I can go there, I have to ask permission first, and I knew if I asked, Mom would say, “Why do you want to go there? You already have three books.” And “What book do you want, again?” And even though Mom is very understanding, I wanted to have this as a secret, so I kept my mouth shut and drew a few pictures of The Pie running and jumping fences, and of Velvet sitting on him. I realized that secrets you don’t want to tell because you want them to be yours are different from secrets you can’t tell because they belong to someone else. The second kind just seem to be popping in your head like popcorn, so you get nervous and have to be careful, but your own secrets sit there quietly, and you can look at them whenever you want to and then put them away again.
And speaking of Jimmy Murphy’s secret, the other thing about it was that Brian seemed just like his regular self. One time I asked Mary how he was, and she said, “Just as naughty as he’s always been,” and Brian heard her and stuck his tongue out at her, then turned to me and crossed his eyes, then twirled his finger by his ear, meaning that Mary was crazy. We all laughed, including Mary, and Brian jumped up and down. I have to say that Jimmy Murphy has stayed a good boy, though. It has been three weeks now since he threw the book, and even though six spitballs have hit him on the head, he hasn’t tossed any back, and he hasn’t stuck his foot out to trip anyone, either.
* * *
—
After school, I went out the back way, across the playground, and down the street. When I got to Ruthie’s house, the one with the outside stairs up to the second floor, I walked back and forth in front of it, looking at everything. All the windows and the door were wide open. I could have climbed the stairs and gone inside. Everyone who knows me would think that I’d do that in an instant because I am so nosy, but just thinking about it made me a little scared. There were some boxes by the curb. I opened the lid of one and saw a shirt that Ruthie had worn for a while and I guess grown out of. The sleeve was torn. There was some other stuff, but I didn’t poke around. I closed the lid and walked down the block and turned the corner. I wondered two things—was she my friend, and would I miss her? I didn’t know the answer to either of those things.
* * *
—
That night I dreamt about National Velvet. Velvet was sitting on The Pie, and the wind was blowing through the trees. She was at the stables, and the colonel was in the background. He was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I kept pulling on her leg, like I was trying to pull her off The Pie. The Pie just stood like a statue. I woke up and sat there wide awake for a really long time, so long that after I finally fell asleep, Mom had to get me up (I usually wake up by myself), help me get dressed, and shoo me out of the house with an English muffin in one hand and some money for lunch in the other, since we didn’t have time to pack my sandwich. I yawned all through arithmetic, social studies, and reading. I might have even dozed off, because the room got kind of hot and I felt like I was waking up. But Mr. Nathan didn’t say anything, and after lunch (they served hash, which I like) I felt back to my old self.
As I was going out the front door of the school, Jimmy Murphy caught up with me and said, “Did you fall asleep before lunch?”
I said, “Maybe. What do you think?”
“Well, I was looking at you. Your eyes were open, and you were sitting straight up, but you were so still for so long that I thought you were going to fall out of your chair.”
“You should have hit me with a spitball.”
“I thought about it.”
“Did Mr. Nathan look at me?”
“A couple of times, but then he saw Todd stick his wad of gum on the underside of his chair, so he got on Todd, and when Todd pulled it off again, it made this long string, and everyone was staring at that. Did you hear him say that Todd was going to have to come to school on Saturday and clean the bottoms of all the chairs?”
“No.”
“I guess you were asleep, then.”
“I guess I was.”
“You’re lucky you can do that. I wish I could do that. All day.”
I said, “Do you know what happened to Ruthie?” But I said it in a low voice, and Jimmy was already walking away. He didn’t answer.
Mom was on the porch with Joan Ariel in her arms, and she looked at me like she had something to tell me. I went up the steps.
She didn’t tell me right away. She put Joan Ariel in the playpen. Joan Ariel didn’t cry. Mom took my jacket and hung it up, then went into the kitchen and came out with my cookie and my glass of milk. She set those on the coffee table and sat down, then she sighed a big sigh, which made me sigh a big sigh, too. I don’t know why that is.
After I ate all my cookie and drank half of my milk, she picked Joan Ariel up again and started bouncing her gently on her knee. Finally, she said, “Well, Ellen, I have something to tell you.”
I said, “I know.”
She said, “I’m sure you do.”
But I decided that I didn’t want to hear it, so I said, “You know, I had a bad dream last night, and I stayed up so long afterward that I fell asleep at school, but Jimmy Murphy said that my eyes were wide open and I sat up completely straight, and even when”—I thought of a name—“Paulie Miller poked me with his pencil, I didn’t fall over. How do you think I did that?”
She leaned toward me with a smile and said, “Honey, I don’t think you did that.”
I said, “Oh.”
Before I could think of anything else to say, she said, “When your dad started out in the vacuum cleaner business, we knew it was a little iffy. We didn’t think he would last in it as long as he has, but he’s done a good job.” She looked around. She said, “I mean, your dad was not cut out to sit behind a desk in an office—”
I said, “Do you remember that paper-doll book I had?”
“I do. You didn’t like it.”
“I would like it now.”
“Ellen.”
There was a long pause that was supposed to tell me to be quiet. I was quiet. Joan Ariel had fallen asleep. She was quiet, too.
Mom said, “Anyway, Dad has to get out of the vacuum cleaner business, and find something else to do, and I think the thing he has found to do is back east, where his folks live.”
I said, “I know.”
“How do you know?”
“I keep my wits about me.” This is an expression Grandma uses.
Mom stared at me, then laughed. Joan Ariel squirmed in her sleep but didn’t wake up. Then Mom said, “Well, yes, you do.”
“When do we leave?”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know. Your dad hasn’t accepted the position yet. I just think that you should be prepared.”
I said nothing and looked at the atlas on the coffee table. I knew that the place we were moving to would be really small but seem really big. I said, “Where would it be?”
“Pittsburgh.”
“Is that where Gran and Pop live?”
“No. But the man who owns the company is friends with Pop. They went to college together.”
My eyes went to the atlas again. Mom saw this, and opened the cover and found the page. There was Pittsburgh, there was Philadelphia, where I had been three times. I said, “Are there horses there?”
“I’m sure there are.”
But not Ned. Not Sissy. Not Abby. Not Gee Whiz. Not even Tater. I got up from the sofa and went upstairs to my room.
* * *
—
For the rest of the week, no one said a word about Ruthie.
I did not look at the map of Pittsburgh.
I did all my homework.
I did not fall asleep in school.
I didn’t say anything to Grandma or Grandpa about Pittsburgh.
