Ask Anybody Read online

  It looks funny to see grown men and women eating with bibs on. I remember hearing the water lapping against the pilings. It was a night to remember, all right All that was missing that time was my mother too.

  6

  A swarm of kids was already at the bus stop when me and the boys walked up there in the morning. There were the regulars: Ollie and Jerry Brown and the two Kimball girls. We said hi. In the distance I saw Nell Foster, trailed by three people. It wasn’t until they got close that I saw they were all boys. They all looked like her. They wore clothes that were either too big or too small. Nell’s curls were round and fat and perfect.

  “Hello.” I broke the ice. “Your hair looks nice.”

  She stood still, turning her head this way and that to show off the curls to best advantage.

  “It’s naturally curly,” she said in a piercing voice.

  “It is not!” the largest boy said in a half shout. She reached over and took a swipe at him. He ducked. The other two stood silent, picking at their noses with little cold fingers, snuffling, looking out across the field like they didn’t care what went on.

  “My mama has naturally curly hair too,” Nell said, keeping her eye on the big boy. He opened his mouth. She lifted her closed fist. He closed it.

  “I get my naturally curly hair from my mama,” Nell went on. “My mama’s a beautician,” she added, as if the two were connected.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “When the hell’s this bus get here anyway?” Nell said. The other kids kept quiet. They watched and listened, as if they were at a play and we were the actors.

  I looked down the hill. “Any minute now. So why’d you move here? Your daddy in business here?” I made my voice sprightly and interested, the way you’re supposed to with a new acquaintance.

  “Oh, my daddy’s gone,” Nell said, gazing soulfully up at the sky. I took that to mean her daddy was in heaven. I felt bad I’d asked about him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “When’d he die?”

  “He didn’t die” she said impatiently. “He’s gone. Flew the coop. Took a powder. Maybe he’ll be back.” She shrugged. “Usually he comes back. If he can locate us, that is.”

  The bus chugged up the hill. Bill, the driver, swung the door open. “Cold enough for you?” he said. We all got in. “You new around here?” he asked Nell.

  “We live yonder,” she said, herding the three boys in front of her like they were sheep. “They told us to go on down to the school today. A lady came to our house and told us that.” Nell flicked her eyes; checking out the other kids in the bus. “Otherwise, we wouldn’ta gone. I got better things to do,” she announced.

  “Sit down and keep quiet and we’ll all be pals,” Bill said, closing the door with a whoosh, starting up.

  Nell directed the two little boys to a seat, then she sat directly behind them. The big boy went to the back and sat on his spine, frowning out the window. I sat next to Nell, although she didn’t ask me to.

  “What grade you in?” I asked her.

  “I’m not sure.” Slowly, with great attention, she took off her mittens. She was the only one who wore mittens. Her brothers’ hands were bare. I couldn’t help noticing her fingernails were painted green.

  “Maybe fifth, maybe sixth,” she went on, holding her hands up, inspecting her fingernails with care. “I’m very smart, you know.” She fixed me with her speckled yellow eyes, eyes that put me in mind of a cat’s eyes.

  “My uncle lives with us,” she informed me. “My Uncle Joe. He helps us out sometimes. He drives a truck, you see. An egg truck,” she added in a lofty tone, trying to impress me. I was more impressed by her green fingernails.

  “You know he’s got to be a good truck driver if they let him drive one of those huge egg trucks loaded down with eggs.” She gripped my arm with fingers like steel. She was very strong. “Now don’t you know that?” she demanded.

  From his seat across the aisle, Tad said, “Daddy said you better wait for me after school, Sky. He said you better not go to somebody’s house, that you should wait for me.” Tad talks a lot when he’s nervous.

  “I know,” I said. “I won’t go without you.” tad settled back in his seat. As long as nothing happens to change the plans, he’s all right

  “That’s my brother,” I told Nell.

  “I got three brothers,” she said. I noticed she didn’t ask me any questions. “There’s the two littles, then the big guy. Him and me are only a year apart. I only hit them when they get out of line. They know not to mess with me. I keep them in line, all right.”

  “I like your fingernails,” I said. “How’d you get ’em that color?”

  She leaned toward me. I could smell her hair. It smelled of hair spray.

  “That’s nothing,” she bragged. “You oughta see my toenails.” There didn’t seem to be much to say to that so I didn’t say it. When the bus pulled up in the school parking lot, I asked Nell if she wanted me to show her where the principal’s office was. She shrugged. “I’ll find it,” she said. “Come on, you,” and she herded her brothers in front of her. If it’d been me, I would’ve been shaking in my shoes. A new school on the first day is a nervous-making thing. Ask anybody. But not Nell. I stared at her as she marched her brothers in the door, her ringlets bouncing, mittens stuffed in her pocket so everyone could see her green fingernails.

  7

  In the lunchroom Nell was surrounded by boys; thin, fat, short, tall, you name it. Older boys, like Tommy Minch and Roger Brough. Roger already had a mustache. I heard he trimmed it in the boys’ room with his mother’s manicure scissors. He and Tommy had been left back so many times nobody could remember what grade they were in. Boys whose names I didn’t even know, and I’d been in the same school all my life. Well, since kindergarten, anyway.

  “What’s she doing, giving away dollar bills?” Rowena huffed, her nostrils flaring as she watched Nell through slitted eyes. Her jaws moved as if they were keeping time to music as she chewed her bologna sandwich. “I’m surprised they stand for that sort of thing in the lunchroom.”

  Betty pressed her lips together and said, “I never.” The words came out as if they’d been squashed along the way. “I absolutely never.” She didn’t say what she never. She opened her lunch bag and peered down into it, holding her head back on her long neck as if she expected something live to spring out at her.

  “She just got here,” Rowena said in an aggrieved tone, “and would you please look at her. She must think she’s a TV personality. Who does she think she is!” Rowena tossed her head, and the odor of vinegar filled the air.

  “My mother says they’re only renting,” Rowena said. A burst of laughter ricocheted around the room. I saw one of the boys, who only last week had stuffed a note down Rowena’s sweater, making goo-goo eyes at Nell. Rowena saw him too, and although at the time she’d told me she thought he was terribly immature, I noticed her watching him watching Nell, and her face was not friendly. I ate my cream cheese and nut sandwich and thought about the fickle hearts of men. About which I know zilch.

  “So what if they’re only renting?” I said. “I think she’d be very good to have in the club.”

  “In what way?” Betty asked, sounding like a dowager at a tea party. “In what way could she possibly be good to have in the Chum Club?” She always calls it by its full name, Chum Club. Just because it was her idea. She thinks it sounds classier that way.

  “For one thing, she knows how to find stuff at the dump. You heard her. And we need stuff to sell. That’s what a yard sale’s all about, dummy. Items to sell. You heard what she said about the davenport and the bed and the chiffonier.”

  I had them. I could tell by the light of pure, unadulterated greed shining from their eyes that I had them by the tail.

  “I don’t even know what a chiffonier is,” Rowena said, but her voice lacked its customary ring of authority.

  “It’s big,” I said. I didn’t know what a chiffonier was either. I�
��d meant to look it up in the dictionary last night, and I’d forgotten. “We could get a bundle for big stuff like that.”

  “Renters”—Rowena got back on course—“are ships that pass in the night. They are transients. Furthermore”—she extracted a piece of bologna from between her teeth and tossed it over her shoulder as if she’d made a wish on it—“they are frequently deadbeats. They don’t pay their bills. They have been known to skip town under cover of darkness, kiddo. Owing back rent. Plus other bills. My mother says renters are very irresponsible people.”

  “You’re a troublemaker,” I told her. “And full of hogwash.” And so’s your mother, I wanted to say and didn’t.

  “My mother says if those people ever came to her on bended knee, she’d turn the other cheek. She is a very forgiving person, my mother.”

  “Why would they come to your mother on bended knee?” I said. The very idea made me laugh.

  “All right for you.” They both got sore. Betty said, “She’s a newcomer, and we’ve been friends for life.”

  “Someday you might be a newcomer,” I said. “I hope people are nicer to you than you are to her.”

  “Since when are you known for charity?” Rowena snapped.

  “She’s different. She could teach us things. Besides,” I said, “she’s got IT.”

  “She’s got what?” Rowena asked irritably.

  “IT,” I said. “That’s what they called sex appeal in the olden days.”

  “How do you spell it?” Rowena asked.

  “I-T,” I told her. “How else? Also known as OOMPH. Spelled just the way it sounds,” I said, in case she wanted to know how to spell that word too. “Isn’t that a neat word? I love it.”

  Rowena and Betty said, “OOMPH,” a couple of times, to get the feel of it. They liked it too.

  “I like OOMPH better than IT,” they both decided.

  Whatever it was called, whatever it was, Nell obviously had it. We obviously didn’t. I suspected Rowena was going to have a tough time digging up somebody to stuff notes down the back of her sweater as long as Nell was around. I was glad about that. It didn’t matter to Betty and me because we didn’t expect it. But Rowena had gotten impossible, more so than usual, since the notes started coming. It would do her good to be taken down a peg or two.

  “Forget about her.” Betty’s eyelids fluttered madly. “We don’t want her in the club anyway. She can join one of the other clubs.”

  Our class is loaded with clubs. There’s the Sci-Fi Club for people who are into science fiction. They run around talking gobbledygook, a strange-sounding language that is their idea of how people from outer space talk. No one but them can understand it.

  Then there’s the Y Club, whose members swim in the Y pool all year round. They go around all winter with icicles hanging from their ears, smelling of chlorine. The Fan Club has the most members, although some dropped out when the postal rates went up. They write fan letters to Farrah Fawcett and Cher—people like that. Sometimes they get form letters back, saying, “Thanks for your nice letter.” One girl wrote a long letter to Joan Crawford, telling her she’d heard about all the mean things Joan’s daughter wrote about her mother and that she didn’t believe a one. She told Joan she admired her and thought she was the world’s greatest actress. She said in her letter, “Please send me an autographed picture of you.” Then for weeks she rushed home from school to see if Joan had written back. Finally someone clued her in to the fact that Joan was dead. And had been for some time. She cried for two whole days, she felt so bad. Then she wrote a letter to Joan’s daughter telling her what she thought of her for writing such nasty things about her own mother, closing with “Please send me an autographed copy of your book.” She mailed the letter to the publisher of the book. She never heard another word.

  After school Tad was waiting for me at the bus stop. Nell passed us by, her brothers bringing up the rear in a little dark clump, like a swarm of bees, scowling at everything and everyone. I heard a boy I knew say to his friend, “She’s some nice,” and I knew he meant Nell.

  The bus was ready to leave. Bill sounded the horn, and Nell came running. “Hey,” I said, friendly like. She pretended she didn’t hear me. All the way home I heard her giggling and talking, her voice fast and high. Tad and I got off at our stop. Nell and her brothers stayed in their seats.

  “End of the line,” Bill said.

  “How about taking us to our front door?” Nell said in a flirtatious way he couldn’t take amiss. Bill laughed and said, “Out,” and Nell put out her tongue at him saucily. I watched her going toward her house, the brothers trailing, kicking at dirty clumps of snow left in the rutted road, kicking at them like the snow was a ball and they were playing a game.

  Tad and I checked our mailbox. “It’s too soon for a postcard,” Tad said.

  “She’s not even there yet,” I said.

  “Hey!” I heard someone shout. I looked up. It was Nell.

  “You want to see our house?” she yelled.

  She wanted to be friends, after all. “Sure,” I shouted back. I like to see people’s houses. “Come on, Tad.” I pulled him along with me. Nell ran on ahead and skinned inside before we reached the porch. Her brothers had disappeared.

  The door opened and Nell poked her head out through the crack.

  “It’ll cost you a nickel,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.

  “If you want to see inside, it’ll cost you a nickel,” she repeated, eyeing us. “’Course, if you only want to look in the window, it’ll be a penny.” She jerked her thumb at Tad. “He can look for free,” she said grandly.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said. I never heard of anyone charging money to look at their house. Except for house tours in the summer, which are another way to get money out of the tourists. They hold tours of the old houses in town, and they charge five or ten dollars, something wicked like that, for people to tour the insides. These tours are very popular and raise lots of money for different charities. The ladies who tour the old houses can’t wear high heels on account of the high heels poke holes in the old floors and old rugs. I never saw so many ladies in hats wearing sneakers in one place in my life as when those hordes of tourists traipse through the old houses.

  Nell inched the door closed until nothing but a thin, pie-shaped piece of her face looked out at me. “Next time you have some money, come on back and I’ll let you in. The two of you. Only a nickel for both.” Her eyes gleamed.

  “It’s a bargain,” she said. “Any way you look at it. Only a nickel for both,” and the door closed and she was gone.

  8

  “I’ve invited Pamela for supper,” my father said, browning onions and garlic in a skillet. “All right with you?”

  “Sure,” I said. Last year my father taught a night course in drawing at the high school. He said he’d never do it again because it took too much time out of his work schedule, but that, for a one-shot thing, it had been fun and interesting. Well, Pamela had been one of his students, and ever since, whenever my mother was away, Pamela oozed her way into our house. Usually at suppertime. If there’s one person who gives me a royal pain, it’s Pamela. She calls herself an artist, but I don’t think she sells anything she paints. Which are pictures of the coastline. Water and rocks, rocks and water. That’s it.

  I’m positive Pamela wears false eyelashes. Once I had this overpowering urge to reach out and pull them, to see if they’d come off. But I didn’t. The first time she came, I asked my father why he’d invited her.

  “Oh, I didn’t invite her,” he said. “She just showed up. So I asked her to stay. I think she’s lonely.” Honestly. For an intelligent man, my father is a pushover. But he has a kind heart. I wish some of it would rub off on me.

  “You want me to make some dessert?” I said.

  “Pamela doesn’t eat dessert.”

  “I mean for me and the boys. Some Jell-O, maybe? With whipped cream
.”

  “Pamela doesn’t use cream.”

  Well, bully for her. “How’s Plotsie doing?” I asked, to get off the subject of Pamela.

  “I’m sorry to say Plotsie seems to be at a standstill. I’m trying to think up a new sequence for him to get involved in.”

  “Dad,” I said. We almost never get a chance to talk, what with the boys around. “Dad, do you think you and Mom will ever get together again?”

  He threw some hamburger into the pot and stirred. “I don’t know,” he said. “Your mother’s a free spirit. There’s no sense trying to hold her when she wants to be off. No sense at all.”

  “But we’re her children,” I said. “She’s got no business going off and leaving us.” I tried to keep the anger I felt out of my voice and wasn’t too successful.

  He looked at me, surprised. “Why don’t you tell her that?” he said. “Maybe she’d listen to you.”

  Sidney came in. “Mrs. Edwards gave me a teddy bear,” he said. “She says it’s mine. It’s got holes where its eyes was.”

  “Were,” my father said.

  “Were what?” Sidney asked, puzzled.

  “Eyes were. Not eyes was.”

  Tad wandered through on his way to the bathroom. I could tell because he was clutching himself. Tad always clutches himself when he has to go to the bathroom. My mother says he’ll outgrow it. I certainly hope so. For his sake.

  A car pulled up outside. Pamela breezed in without knocking. She must feel pretty secure with my mother out of the country. She pressed cheeks with my father, who was busy making salad dressing. “Watch it,” he cautioned. “You almost made me spill the vinegar.”

  She drew back and said, “Sorry.” Then she said, “Hi, kids.” Tad stepped up his pace and kept on walking and clutching. Sidney said he had to go check on his teddy bear.

  “What can I do to help?” Pamela said in that way people have when they expect to be told, “Absolutely nothing.”

  “How about cleaning the oven?” I said. “It’s a mess.” I laughed in a phony way to show her I was only kidding. It’s true that I hate phoniness, as I said, but am sometimes guilty of it myself.