The Saturdays (3 page)

“I don't see why not. And you can even keep it a secret if you want to. Can't she, Rush?”

“Okay by me,” said Rush. “Maybe I'll go to the Metropolitan Opera House instead of Carnegie. Maybe I'll take a ride to Staten Island, or go up on top of the Empire State Building. Maybe I'll buy a set of trained fleas. Who knows? A dollar and a half is no paltry sum.”

“And my dime,” Oliver pointed out.

“And your dime, Fatso, my friend,” said Rush. “That makes a dollar sixty and I think it's swell of you to want to do it.”

Oliver began putting his paint things away. It was dusky in the big room. The skylight glowed with a pale reflection of city lights, and the fire had burned to embers in the grate. Outside the rain whispered and murmured against the glass, as though the air were full of secrets. Rush went back to the piano, playing softly, absentmindedly, thinking about his Saturday and the way he would use it. Mona lay face down on the sofa, and Randy sat cross-legged on the hearth rug. They were thinking too.

A piercing sound shattered the peace of the moment: Cuffy was blowing the police whistle down in the kitchen. That meant it was time for Oliver's supper, time for Randy to set the table, time for Rush to get to work on the shoes, and for Mona to tidy up the Office, since it was her week. And it also meant that it was time for Father to stop working. If he didn't Cuffy would come up to the study and stand at the door saying gently but firmly, “Now, Mr. Melendy, it's half past five. You've been working a long time. You ought to get a little rest for yourself.” And there she'd stand till Father was forced to give in.

Mona snapped on the lights.

“All right, kids, beat it,” she said. “I'm going to pick up.”

Oliver and Rush ran down the stairs: Oliver galumphing like a baby buffalo, and Rush so quickly and lightly that you hardly heard him.

Randy went into the bathroom in a daze and washed her hands in cold water (it took forever for the hot water to get up to the top floor). She was thinking when my Saturday comes what will I do with it besides the pictures? I mustn't waste a minute or a penny of it.

It was like a door opening into an enchanted country which nobody had ever seen before; all her own to do with as she liked.

CHAPTER II

Saturday Two

Of course Father said yes. But he had certain conditions which they already knew by heart. They were the same ones he had imposed when they started going to school by themselves.

“Don't get run over,” he said. “That's the first and most important rule. Look where you're going, and watch the lights when you cross the street. This applies to Randy in particular who believes too often that she's walking in another world: a safer, better one. It's the people who make the safety on this earth as well as the trouble, unfortunately.” Father glared at the newspaper that lay on the floor beside him. “Sometimes I think the Golden Age must have been the Age of Reptiles. Well, anyway, let me see what was I saying—? Oh, yes. Randy and the lights. And another thing. If you get lost or in trouble of any kind
always
look for a policeman. Sooner or later you'll find one and he'll know what to do; and don't hesitate to ask him even if he's the traffic cop at Forty-second and Fifth with buses breathing fire on every side. Let's see, what else?”

“Don't talk to strangers,” Randy prompted him.

“Yes, that's right, don't talk to strangers. Unless you know by looking at them that they're kind people, and even then think twice. Be home no later than quarter to six, and Randy had better make it five.” He picked up his newspaper and flapped it open. “That's about all. Oh, one last thing—See that you do something you really
want;
something you'll always remember. Don't waste your Saturdays on unimportant things.”

“Yes, that's one of the rules,” Mona told him.

“Is it? Good. Then go with my blessings.”

Then they went to Cuffy who naturally said yes too, but not as if she cared for the idea.

“Well, I hope it's all right, I'm sure. Seems to me like you're pretty young to be kiting all over a big city by yourselves. And one at a time, too, not even together. Don't you get run over now!” They couldn't help laughing at that: all grownups had learned the same set of precautions apparently.

“And it's nothing to giggle about, neither,” said Cuffy severely. “I don't want nobody run over, nor nobody lost so's we have to get the police out after 'em. I suppose I can't keep you from getting a little lost once in a while. It'd be against nature. But not so lost that we have to get the police out after you.”

Good old Cuffy. It was that sort of thing that made them love her so much.

“If you
do
get lost,” she continued, “you can always go up and ask—”

“A
policeman!
” shouted Mona and Randy and Rush in unison.

“Do you think it's polite to take the words right out of people's mouths?” inquired Cuffy, pretending to be offended. “And another thing—”

“DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS!” they cried.

“Well,” said Cuffy, giving up. “I can't say much for your manners but I'm glad to see you've got the right ideas at least.”

“What about strange policemen?” said Rush, looking innocent.

“Oh, go on with you! Out of my kitchen, the whole tribe of you!” Cuffy made sweeping gestures with the broom. “My patience is worn about's thin as the sole of my shoe.”

But that wasn't true, and they knew it. Cuffy's patience was as deep as the earth itself.

After a brief discussion it was decided that Randy as founder of the Club should have the privilege of the first Saturday. For the next five days she worked feverishly in her school craft shop whenever she got a chance, and by Friday evening she was able to distribute four small pins cut out of copper, and each bearing the mysterious name Isaac.

“Swear on your sacred word of honor
never
to tell anyone what this pin means,” Randy said to the Club members. And they all swore, even Oliver. It was a solemn moment.

Saturday dawned much the same as any other day, maybe even a little greyer than most, but when Randy woke up she had the same feeling in her stomach that she always had on Christmas Day. A wonderful morning smell of coffee and bacon drifted up the stairwell from the kitchen, and she could hear a familiar clattering spasm deep in the house: Willy Sloper shaking down the furnace. Mona was still asleep, a mound entirely covered up except for one long trailing pigtail that looked as if it were awake all by itself.

Randy lay staring absently at the wall beside her bed where pictures hung at haphazard intervals. She had painted all the pictures herself and there was a reason for their strange arrangement: the wallpaper was old and the pictures served to cover up peeled and faded places. They were all drawings of enigmatic-faced princesses and sorceresses. Each had mysterious, slanted eyes, a complicated headdress and elaborate jewels; each was posed against a background of palaces, rocks and dashing waves, or forests with unicorns. “Don't you ever get tired of drawing Lucrezia Borgia all the time?” Rush had once asked her.

For a while Randy lay still just being happy; then she stretched. S-t-r-e-t-ch-ed way up and way down. During it she probably grew half an inch. After that she got out of bed, stepping over her bedroom slippers as usual.

“Ow! Is it cold!” Randy complained happily, and closed the window with a crash that drew protesting grumbles from the little mountain range that was Mona.

The morning finally went by with Randy pushing it every second. It was awful to sit at the lunch table while Cuffy calmly insisted that she must eat everything on her plate. Everything.

“Oh, Cuffy, even my
beets?
”

“
All
your beets,” replied Cuffy inexorably. “And
all
your squash.”

Randy looked witheringly at the food on her plate.

“Beets are so boring,” she said. “The most boring vegetable in the whole world next to squash.”

“Not so boring as spinach,” said Rush. “Spinach is like eating a wet mop.”

“That will be enough of that!” commanded Cuffy in the voice that meant no nonsense.

At last it was over, even the tapioca, and Randy just stopped herself in time from remarking that she considered tapioca the most boring dessert in the world next to stewed rhubarb.

Mona came into their room while Randy was changing her dress.

“How'd you like to borrow my ambers?” she asked.

“Oh, Mona!” Randy was overcome. “Do you mean you'd let me? Honestly? Oh, I'd be so careful of them, I promise I would.”

She felt like a princess in her brown velveteen dress with the amber necklace that had belonged to Mother. “It's like big lumps of honey,” she said, staring into the mirror.

“Well, don't you lose it now,” admonished Mona, not quite regretting her generosity. “Have a good time, Ran, and don't forget you have to be back by five.”

“I won't,” promised Randy, giving her sister a hug. “Good-bye, you're swell to let me wear the ambers.”

She said good-bye to everyone just as though she were going away for a long voyage. Cuffy gazed at her thoughtfully.

“You look awful little to be going off by yourself like this,” she said. “Now remember, don't you get run over and don't—”

“I won't, I won't!” cried Randy, quickly running down the steps and waving her blue leather pocketbook in which the dollar and sixty cents rattled wealthily.

My, it's a nice day, she thought. Nobody else would have thought so. The sky was full of low clouds and the air had a damp, deep feeling in it that meant rain after a while. But being by yourself, all by yourself, in a big city for the first time is like the first time you find you can ride a bicycle or do the dog paddle. The sense of independence is intoxicating. Randy skipped halfway up the block, a leisurely lighthearted skip, and then she walked the rest of the way, stepping over each crack in the pavement. It was very dangerous, she had to be careful, because if she did step on a crack she would be turned into stone forevermore.

On Fifth Avenue the big green buses rattled by like dinosaurs. I'm going to walk though, Randy decided. I'm going to walk all the way and look in all the windows. So that's what she did. The shop windows were wonderful: Woolworth's dime store was just as wonderful as Tiffany's jewelry store, and she reached Fifty-seventh Street in either a very long or a very short time, she wasn't sure which, because the walk had been so interesting.

It was just beginning to rain when she came to the art gallery where the French pictures were being shown for the benefit of war relief. It cost seventy-five cents to go in, so Randy planned to stay a long time and gave her coat to the doorman.

The gallery was hushed and dim after the bright, sharp street. The soft rugs on the floor, the soft neutral color of the walls, with each picture glowing beneath its own special light, made her feel as if she had walked into a jewel case.

“Catalogue, miss?” said a man at a little desk. His eyeglasses flashed in the dimness.

“Thank you,” Randy said, and took one of the little folders he offered; then, almost on tiptoe, she stepped into the main room of the gallery. There were a lot of people looking at the pictures and talking to each other as if they were in church, low-voiced and serious. One of the people she knew, and at sight of her Randy's heart sank. It was old Mrs. Oliphant (“the Elephant,” Rush called her behind her back) who really was old because she had known Father's father way back in the last century. She was a big, tall old lady with a lot of furs that smelled of camphor, and a great many chains around her neck that got caught on each other. Now and then she came to the Melendys', and once they had all been taken to Sunday dinner at her house when it was raining and everybody ate too much and Oliver got sick on the bus going home. She was nice, Randy supposed, but so far away in her oldness and dignity. She hoped Mrs. Oliphant wouldn't notice her.

Pretty soon she forgot about everything but the pictures. There was a nice one of a girl in an old-fashioned dress playing the piano. She had a snub nose and a long yellow braid sort of like Mona (only of course it was probably a French girl). If she looked at a picture long enough, without being interrupted, Randy could make it come alive sometimes; and now she could almost hear the music the girl in the picture was playing: quite hard music, probably, but played very stiffly, with a lot of mistakes, the way Mona played.

“Marvelous substance,” murmured a hushed voice behind her, and another hushed voice replied, “Unbelievable resilience in the flesh tones!”

Gee whiz, thought Randy, are they talking about the picture? And she moved on to the next one; a field all burning yellow in the sunshine. You could tell it was twelve o'clock noon on a summer day; probably July. Randy could nearly smell the heat, and hear the locusts in the trees sounding exactly like Father's electric razor in the mornings. She was having a good time. She looked at all the pictures: fat ladies bathing in a brook, a girl with opera glasses, apples and pears on a blue plate, a man in a boat, two dead rabbits, and then all of a sudden she came to the picture that was hers, her very own one.

Randy was always finding things that belonged to her in a special way, though ownership had nothing to do with it. Now she had found the picture. The catalogue told her that the picture was called The Princess, that it had been painted by someone named Jules Clairon in the year 1881. In the picture a girl about Randy's age was sitting on a garden wall and looking out over an enormous city. She had a solemn little face: her long hair hung to the sash of her old-fashioned dress, and her high-heeled boots were buttoned almost to the knee. Among the potted chrysanthemums at her feet sat a black poodle with a red bow on top of his head. On either side the clipped plane trees were almost bare, and in the distance the huge city was spread in a dusky web of blue and grey.