The Naked Mole-Rat Letters (12 page)

“It's nice to meet you, Frankie.” She smiled, and the empty look in her eyes made me feel so sad, I had to look away. She really didn't remember meeting me. Was this Alzheimer's?

The whole picture: Johnny and his grandma on this lonely road with the trailer and the chickens . . . I was
seeing
it, but I couldn't imagine
living
it.

“I'm gonna walk Frankie home,” Johnny said.

I didn't even have a chance to digest that statement because what he did next blew me away. Tough Johnny Nye, the kid who gets into trouble for ditching school and cussing teachers and setting off cherry bombs, walked over and gave his grandma a kiss on the cheek.

I didn't know what to say, so I just started walking.

“See if your girlfriend wants any tomatoes, Johnny,” his grandma called.

I'm sure she meant girl friend and not
girlfriend
, but I was too embarrassed to look at Johnny. I kept walking. He caught up to me with two tomatoes in his hands and an embarrassed look on his face.

“Sorry about that girlfriend thing,” he mumbled. “She didn't know what she was saying.”

“That's okay,” I said. I wanted to ask him about his grandma's memory and how bad it was and how long she'd been that way. And I wanted to tell him how sweet he was with her. But I kept my mouth shut.

We walked in silence. After a while he looked at me and said, “I thought that was pretty cool.”

“What?”

“Your dad writing that song.”

I was too shocked to say a word.

“I like writing songs,” he said, and I wondered if he had written the song he had played. “How come you don't like her?” he asked.

“Ratlady? Because I don't want my dad to get involved with anybody.”

“Where does she live?”

“Washington, D.C.”

He whistled. We kept walking.

“How'd they meet?” he asked.

“At a conference.”

“Love at first sight, huh?”

I shrugged.

“Do you believe in it?” he asked.

“In what?”

“Love at first sight.”

A hot-air balloon from Mars could have landed in front of us and I wouldn't have been any more surprised than I was by the way this conversation was going. When I finally found my voice, I stammered, “I—I th-think that it's wise to be cautious. I think you have to get to know somebody first.”

How stupid.

He didn't say anything, and we walked a ways without talking. Then he turned to me. His eyes were as blue as the sky, and he was smiling, as if he were telling himself a joke.
He held up a tomato. “You think it's like this?” he asked.

“What?”

“Maybe you think love is like a tomato. It has to grow.”

On the outside I probably looked like a normal girl walking along a gravel road. But inside I was screaming:
Johnny Nye is talking to me about love being like tomatoes!
I was screaming at myself so loud that I forgot he had asked me a question.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don't know why I asked you that. You're all red.”

I looked at him. “Your face is red, too.”

He smiled. “We're a couple of walking tomatoes.”

We both laughed, and I felt myself turn even redder. I couldn't possibly think of what to say next, and I knew that he couldn't think of what to say, either. We just kept looking at those two big red tomatoes, and it was like he was holding our embarrassment in his hands.

And then Johnny did this funny thing. He stopped and threw one of the tomatoes at a
tree. He just let it fly, and it hit the trunk with a satisfying
splat!

“Your turn,” he said, and handed me the other tomato.

I pitched it . . . 
splat!

He laughed. “Frankie Wallop, you got a pretty good arm.”

“Thank you.”

“Were you pretending to aim at that Ratlady's face?”

I laughed.

Whatever felt awkward between the two of us had flown out and splattered like those tomatoes. We walked for a while and talked about teachers and school. I asked if he was going to the Fall Festival, and without thinking I blurted out, “You should sign up for the open mike.”

He looked at me as if I'd just told him to go visit the president. “You mean you think I should play?”

“If you want to. I mean, anybody can sign up. You should sign up. If you want to.”

He stuck his hands into his pockets. “I've seen you play with the Red Beet Ramblers,
and I saw you in that school show last year. You're good.”

I almost fell down dead. When I performed I didn't really think about who was in the audience, other than Dad and Grandma. It was unbelievably strange to think that Johnny Nye watched me sing onstage and had an opinion about me.

“I think I'd be too nervous to sing in front of lots of people,” he said.

“It's not so bad once you get going.”

“You made it for the play this semester, didn't you?”

“I made it. But I didn't get the part I wanted.”

“Haxer's an idiot,” he said.

I laughed, and he smiled.

“Who got the part you wanted?”

I rolled my eyes. “Melinda Bixby.”

“Bixby? Next to you, she's a cow!”

We both laughed.

We got to my street, and I stopped. The last thing I needed was to be seen with Johnny Nye. My reputation was in trouble right now.
If I were seen with Johnny, it would go right down the drain.

“Well, thanks again,” I said.

A look came into his eyes like he could read my mind. He reached into his pocket and took out the money. He gave it back, his fingers brushing my hand.

“But—”

“I don't want it,” he said. “I'll help you for nothing. If you want, I can . . .”

Did he want to get together again? Was he offering more help? Did he like me? It was all too confusing. I said good-bye and hurried home.

I was dying to shut myself in my room and write about everything that had happened.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time because Beth pounced on me the minute I walked through the door. “Come and listen to this. It is so amazing.” She pulled me into the dining room. Skip and Nutter were sitting at the table with Skip's spy recorder.

Skip grinned at me. “We were playing outside, and I overheard Mrs. Holmes talking
on the phone on her back patio, so I taped her. Listen . . .”

I looked at Beth. “I'm not talking to Skip, Beth. He is a traitor as well as a spy.”

“You're going to want to hear this, Frankie,” he said while he rewound the tape.

“I don't want to hear it again,” Nutter complained. “I want you guys to help me make my koala costume.”

“I don't want to hear it, either,” I said. “You promised you were going to stop spying on people.”

“You've got to hear it,” Beth said. “We've already listened to it three times.”

Skip pushed the button, and Mrs. Holmes's voice started in midsentence: “. . . is falling apart. . . . I agree. . . . Yes, and I heard that Robert is having a nervous breakdown. . . . It's true. . . . Well, yes. . . . I think there's only one thing that would truly help. We need to fix him up with somebody, Susan. They need a woman in that house, don't you know it?”

“Oh great!” I exclaimed. “Now Mrs. Holmes is going to try to fix Dad up with somebody.”

“What does ‘fix up' mean?” Nutter asked. “I don't get it.”

Beth explained, “It means finding him a girlfriend to marry.”

Nutter's eyes grew large. “Dads can't have girlfriends, can they?”

Skip looked suitably horrified. Maybe now he would understand what I meant by knowing our enemies.

“We do
not
need a woman in the house,” I said. “If everybody would just leave us alone—”

“Shhh!” Beth said. “Listen to what comes next.”

Mrs. Holmes's voice continued on tape: “. . . Yes, I do have someone in mind. . . .”

I stared at Beth. Her eyes were wide and crazy-looking, like she didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

“Who?” I asked.

“Shhh! It's coming. . . .”

“I think the perfect match,” Mrs. Holmes said, “would be Doris Trolly.”

I could have dropped dead.

Mrs. Holmes rambled on. “She's single. She
can cook for an army. Did you taste her lasagna at the potluck? And she's a guidance counselor, Susan. Why, she could help him with his problems. And I think she's as cute as a button, in her way.”

Beth laughed.

“It's not funny, Beth!”

“I'm not laughing at the situation,” Beth said. “I'm laughing because she said ‘cute as a button.'”

“What does she look like?” Nutter asked.

“Like a troll,” Beth said.

“Or an army tank with fangs,” I said, and Beth laughed again.

Skip turned off his recorder, grinning with spy satisfaction. I could tell he thought that he had made up for spying on me last night.

I groaned.

“What are you going to do?” Beth asked.

“I'll keep spying on Mrs. Holmes,” Skip announced. “Agent Skip Wallop on active duty!”

“Can I help?” Nutter asked.

The two of them ran off to assemble spy gear.

“I wouldn't worry about it,” Beth said. “I doubt The Troll is looking for love. She probably doesn't even know what love is.”

Beth was staring at me, waiting for me to agree. I didn't know what to think about The Troll. I couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking about the whole scene with Johnny Nye and about the love song my dad had written to Ratlady.

As nonshalantly (nonchalantly?) as possible, I got rid of Beth and came up here to write. Now my hand is killing me. I probably have carple (carpul? carpel?) tunnel syndrome.

As I said, it has been a whirlwind of a day.

The whirlwind continues! Things got worse after Beth left. Dad came home from work at 6:20
P.M
. and had a fit because the house was a mess. At breakfast he had made us promise to clean the house after school because the Fall Festival music committee was meeting here at 6:30.

I had forgotten all about it. Every time I looked at him, I just kept thinking about all those e-mails at his shop. My boring, bushy-bearded father was carrying on a secret life. How could I possibly trust him about anything?

We finished stuffing all our junk into the closet as the doorbell rang.

“Get it, will you, Frankie?” Dad called from the kitchen. “I'm making coffee.”

I opened the door. Standing there like an overgrown trick-or-treater was none other than The Troll. Ms. Doris Trolly. I almost screamed. She was wearing a green velvet jogging suit and lipstick. Pink!

“Hello, Francine,” she said. “May I come in?”

She introduced herself to Dad, and I was waiting for her to mention the forged note about the fake dentist's appointment. But she handed him a plate of cheese and crackers and explained that Mrs. Holmes suggested she join the Fall Festival music committee since she had an interest in music.

“What kind of music?” asked Dad.

“All kinds!” she said, obviously lying through her fangs.

“Wonderful!” Dad said. “We're happy to have you.” He set the cheese and crackers on the coffee table.

My face turned green.

The Troll glanced at the red chair hanging from the ceiling and said, “What a fascinating decorating idea.” What she meant was, “I wouldn't put that in my house if you paid me.”

The others arrived, and Skip and Nutter and I spied on them from the kitchen. The Troll practically knocked over Nelson Wicks to get the chair next to Dad's. All through the meeting she kept laughing and placing her hand on Dad's arm. The Troll, the guidance counselor, was
flirting
with my dad. She wasn't looking for love. She was grabbing it by the throat.

The meeting was over in an hour, but she insisted on staying to help wash the cups and plates. Skip, Nutter, and I ran down the stairs to the basement to continue our spying from there.

On Dad's workbench the dulcimer he was making was all laid out, and I was shocked to see how far he'd gotten. He must have worked on it all night. Dad usually makes his dulcimers from blond wood and carves flowers and diamonds and hearts into them. The one he made for my mom, which is now mine, has a vine with tiny heart-shaped flowers made of pearl. This one is a deep brown. Carved into the fingerboard is a parade of animals—a tiny giraffe, a lion, an elephant, and a zebra.

It was the most beautiful one I had ever seen, and it made me angry to think that he was making it for this woman that he just met. I imagined what I would feel like if I opened a box and saw this. Ratlady will go crazy over it. She'll hop on the next plane heading west. She won't care where it stops; she'll parachute out over Pepper Blossom.

I ran my finger along the fingerboard, feeling the carved animals like Braille. I imagined smashing it into pieces, stuffing it into the fireplace, and lighting a match. But I couldn't give it a single scratch. There were four silver tuning pegs lying next to the dulcimer. I
slipped them into my pocket. Dad had more supplies at Heartstrings, but if I took these I might slow him down a little.

Skip motioned to Nutter and me and whispered, “We can hear what they're saying through here.” He pointed to the heating vent.

I squatted down with Skip and Nutter.

We could hear kitchen sounds, then The Troll's muffled voice, “What an interesting idea for wallpaper!”

She was probably staring in horror at all the postcards that Mom had put up.

“My wife had a wonderful sense of play,” Dad said.

“It must be difficult managing a household on your own.”

“I'm doing all right.”

The water turned on.