Ask Anybody (3 page)

“Well,” I said, “I don't know about you two, but I'm going.” So we went. The moving van was just pulling out as we arrived. It was a move-yourself type. A big, burly red-faced man was driving. He waved to us and we waved back. Rowena's mother was just pulling in, her loaf of freshly baked bread tucked under her arm, her black shoes with the heels carrying her swiftly down the driveway, past the shed where the previous tenants kept their chickens, past the little heaps of car parts scattered here and there, as if for decoration, and onto the front porch, right up to the door.

The yard was deserted. There was an old blue truck out in back and piles of empty boxes and cartons sitting on the porch. Just as Rowena's mother lifted her fist to bang on the door, a dog came around the side of the house, walking slowly on stiff legs, growling a little deep in his throat to show who was boss.

“Oh, oh,” Betty said. We watched. The dog stood still. So did Rowena's mother. A boy who looked like he had adenoids came to the door.

“My ma's not home,” he said, pushing his face against the screening, which billowed out like a sail filled with wind. “She said not to let nobody in.” He stared out at Rowena's mother and us. The dog sighed and flopped down and fell immediately asleep.

“I'm your new neighbor,” Rowena's mother said in her sweet company voice. She held out the bread. “Welcome,” she said. “I baked this fresh this morning. For you all. Welcome.”

He stared at her some more. His dark little eyes were full of hostility. “We can't take stuff from strangers,” he said at last. “My ma said you never know what might be inside. Razor blades. Pizen.” That's what he said: “Pizen.” We figured he meant poison. We could see Rowen's mother's back stiffen. She has been known to fly off the handle.

“Besides,” the boy said, “we're vegetarians,” almost like other folks say, “We're Presbyterians.”

For once, Rowena's mother was speechless. “Let's go,” Betty whispered. That seemed like a good idea. We turned on our heels.

“Where's the dump?” a loud voice demanded.

“What?” I said, looking around. A girl about our age, with plenty of bouncy curls, stood on the steps. “Where's the dump?” she repeated crossly. “Where's it at? First thing we always do, we find where the dump's at. You'd be surprised what you find laying around a dump. Why, once we fixed ourselves up with a bed and a davenport and a chiffonier. All three. Plus”—she dragged out her voice to get our attention—“plus a whole roll of Christmas wrapping paper. Silver and clean as a whisker.” She smiled. “Was that at Bradford Falls, where we found that?” she asked the boy with adenoids. He said something we couldn't catch.

“Anyways,” the girl said impatiently, “where's it at?”

I made my voice as loud as hers as I said, “Turn left at the top of the hill, go along till you come to Cross Road, take another left, follow that to the end. You can't miss it.”

“O.K.” She nodded and didn't say, “Thanks.”

“My name's Schuyler Sweet,” I said. I would've shaken hands, but she had the look about her of turning people down so I didn't. Her dress was real short, and her legs were bare and purplish from the cold. She was eleven, twelve, thereabouts and she already had a figure. None of the rest of us did, although Rowena liked to think
she
did.

“What kind of a name's that? I never heard of a person named that before,” she said.

“Best kind.” I put her in her place. “What's yours?”

“Nell Foster,” she said with a practiced toss of her curls. “These here …” Her arm swept behind her, taking in the crowd of kids who had gathered behind her. There were only three of them, it turned out, but they seemed like a crowd.

“They're my kin.”

Behind me I could hear Betty and Rowena breathing heavily. Take them out of their own backyard and they're all thumbs, if you get my meaning.

“That's a lot of kin,” I said. Nell Foster didn't answer. She stepped smartly back inside the house and shut the door in my face. Rowena's mother snatched up her loaf of bread and marched back down the driveway, head high, shaking with rage.

After a minute we followed. At the end of the property I stole a backward look. The place looked deserted. Even the dog was gone. It was almost as if I'd imagined the lot of them.

“Come on,” Betty called. “We better get out of here. They're outa staters. What can you expect?” I followed them down the narrow dirt road, but I kept my distance so that if anyone happened to look out of the window of the house they wouldn't think we were together.

5

“Mama, I don't want you to go,” Sidney said. The boys and I were watching my mother pack her suitcase. She's leaving tomorrow. My father is driving her to Portland to get a plane to Boston, where she'll catch her flight to Africa.

“I'll only be gone two weeks, Sidney. I'll be back before you know I'm gone.” She swept him up in a big hug. “And I'll bring you back something special. What would you like?” She put Sidney down and held up a flowered skirt. “I hate this skirt,” she said. “Never should have bought it. What would you like, Sidney?”

Sidney concentrated on what he'd like her to bring him. “How about a little alligator?” he said at last. “One I could fit in my pocket. Then I could take him to kindergarten for show-and-tell. I bet it would be the only alligator in school that ever came from Africa. I would like that.” His big eyes never left her face. I knew Sidney would have a bad time the first couple of days my mother was gone. He always did. I never told her how much Sidney missed her because I knew it would make her feel bad. This was the first trip she'd taken since she and Dad had gotten divorced.

My father said from the doorway, “Don't forget to tell your mother to leave us her itinerary. I want to know how to reach her at all times. Just in case.”

“Dad,” I said. “There she is. You tell her.” My father had been shut up in his studio all morning working on Plotsie. I could tell by his hair. It stood up in peaks, like well-whipped cream. Before they got divorced, my mother and father told us that didn't mean they didn't still care about each other. They did, they said. My mother told me when she got back from her trip she might move into a small house and take us kids with her. “What about Dad?” I said.

“He'll manage,” she said, avoiding my eye. “He'll get along fine. Your father doesn't really need people. You'll see.”

I didn't believe her then, and I don't believe her now.

“I'm hoping Angus will come back with me,” my mother said directly to my father. Angus is the great white hunter she told me she was in love with. He's from Australia, only she met him the last time she went to Africa. “I want him to meet the children and see Maine. I want you to meet him too,” she said. “I want to know what you think of him.”

“Don't be too determinedly modern about this, Mary,” my father said, patting his pockets for a pack of cigarettes, forgetting for the moment he'd given them up. “I'm not sure I want to meet Angus.”

My mother got red in the face. “I want the children to meet him and tell me what they think of him. Tad, you haven't said what you want me to bring you.” She cupped Tad's chin in her hand. “What is your heart's desire, darling?” she asked him.

Tad is not very talkative. Some days you can count the number of words he says on the fingers of both hands. My mother and father worried about him when he was little. He didn't start to talk until he was almost four. That's very late to start talking. When he finally broke down, he said, “No, thank you. I don't want any.” Then he shut up for another week or ten days until he had something else worth saying.

Now he said, “I want an elephant tusk, Mama. Not a big one. A medium-size one. Please.” Then he clamped his lips tight shut, a sign he was signing off until further notice.

My mother made out a list: Sidney, one small alligator. Tad, one medium-size elephant tusk.

“How about you, Sky?” she asked me. I felt like saying, “Leave Angus where he's at,” but I knew that would hurt her feelings. So I said, “Oh, I don't know, Mom. How about a warthog? They're kind of cute.” I liked the idea of having my own warthog.

“If I had a warthog, we could make him the mascot of our club,” I said.

“What club's that?” my mother said, checking the camera she was planning to take with her.

“This club we've started. It's called the Chum Club. It's me and Rowena and Betty and maybe the new girl. We didn't ask her yet.”

“I heard there was a new family down the road.” My mother rolled up a pair of chinos and tucked them in a corner of her suitcase. She's an expert packer. A good thing. She does a lot of packing. “That's nice there are some new children around. What time should we leave in the morning?” she asked my father, who lounged in the doorway, propped against the doorframe, regarding her quizzically.

“About nine. I want to get home to get some work done. Sidney can stay with Mrs. Edwards. I'll pick him up there.” Mrs. Edwards lives not far from us. Her children have grown. She loves having Sidney stay with her. She says it's like having her own grandchild. Her children are reluctant to commit themselves to parenthood, she told my mother.

“There's a lot of hogwash going on these days,” Mrs. Edwards said when she told my mother she doubted she'd ever be a grandmother. “If you ask me,” she said, “there's more hogwash going on than previously. If you ask me, there's too much talk and too little action going around these days.” Mrs. Edwards was fond of saying, “If you ask me,” although nobody ever got a chance to ask her anything because she was inclined to answer questions before they were asked.

That night we all ate together. My father was unusually quiet. My mother chatted and smiled and kept patting us. Except my father, of course. We had roast chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans. And apple pie for dessert.

“I'm going to miss you all,” my mother said. Sidney got down from his chair and went off to his room. My mother and father exchanged looks, like in the days before they got their divorce.

“I could kick myself,” my mother said. “How could I be so stupid?”

We heard Sidney keening away in his bed. “What's his problem?” Tad demanded in an angry voice. “She's only going to be gone two weeks.” Then he left the table too, and when I found him, he was lying in the empty, dry bathtub playing with his plastic dinosaurs.

I put my hand on the hot water faucet, pretending I was going to turn it on, trying to make him smile.

“I don't care if she's going,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “She'll be back. Won't she? She said she'd be back. She always comes back.” Here I was, halfway to twelve, and I felt like crying too. But I wasn't going to be a baby about my mother's going. I had to set an example for the boys.

Besides, it wasn't as if my father didn't take good care of us. He always does. I'm glad he works at home. Also, he's quite a good cook. His specialty is fried potatoes. Once in a while we pig out on his fried potatoes. He cooks us a meal and that's all we eat: fried potatoes. We can have all we can hold, he says. We eat until we're full, then he opens a jar of apple sauce or canned peaches for dessert. Once, in the summer, when my mother was away, he took us down to the dock to the Lobster Shack for a lobster dinner. It was so beautiful that night. The moon was full, and there weren't any bugs, and we sat on the deck and tied lobster bibs around our necks so we wouldn't get melted butter on ourselves. Eating lobsters is very messy. People came from miles around to eat at the Lobster Shack. When my father finishes eating a lobster, all that's left is a pile of shells. Being a Maine native, he knows how. It takes years of practice to really eat a lobster, he says.

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?”