Libby on Wednesday (12 page)

Libby struggled against an urge to laugh, and another urge—to give him a good kick. She settled for kicking the air near his shinbone. “Get up, you idiot,” she said, glancing up and down the street to see if anyone was watching.

“Aha! I saw it. A smile. That means you’re not angry. That means you’re going to invite me in. Okay. Here we go.” He jumped up, picked up his book bag, and pushed open the gate. “
Après vous, mademoiselle
.”

Libby was still trying to stop him, still trying to explain why he couldn’t come in, when she suddenly realized that he wasn’t listening at all. Standing in the middle of the path, he was staring up at the house, his face quiet and still.

“Fantastic,” he said softly. “It looks just like him.”

“Like who?” Libby said several times before she got his attention.

“Like Graham McCall.”

“What does?”

“The house does. It looks like what he would build. I mean, if you’ve read his books, you just know that he’d build this exact kind of a house.”

Libby nodded. She’d always felt something like that, almost as if the house itself, in some strange way, were her grandfather. “I know,” she said, and then frowned again. “How do
you
know? You haven’t read his books, have you? They’re not for kids.”

“Sure I’ve read them. Why not? You have, too, haven’t you? And you’re younger than I am.”

“But that’s different. He’s not
your
grandfather.”

“True,” Alex said. “Very true. But then, I read quite a lot of stuff that wasn’t written by my grandfather.” He tipped his head back and looked up again at the high stone pillars, the overhanging balconies and turreted roof. Then he jerked his shoulders up and down several times in a stuttery shrug. “Come on. I think he’s waiting for us,” he said, and led the way up the front steps. Libby followed.

The entry hall alone took several minutes with Alex stopping to stare at the dusty Tiffany lamps and art nouveau statues, the dark, old oil paintings, and the hand-carved pewlike bench that circled the hall, bending to the curve of the wide staircase. Libby, still resenting his presence, said nothing at all, and Alex was silent too. Except that his darting eyes, even more jittery than usual, said things about how excited and fascinated he was. Libby led him up to the landing next and showed him Graham’s portrait, and he stood there staring for so long that she finally had to nudge him in the ribs and tell him firmly to come on. He came back to life then, but before he started moving, he said that he was
going to have to read all of Graham’s books over again, because now that he’d seen his picture, he was sure he’d get a lot more out of them.

They went back down to the library next, and there on the couch by the fireplace were Gillian and Cordelia, reading
The New York Times
. Cordelia was wearing her gray wool flannel dress with the black braid trim, and Gillian was in her lavender jumpsuit with the wide stretch belt. They both looked up, stared in astonishment, and quickly managed welcoming smiles; Cordelia’s a little stiff and uncertain, and Gillian’s deeply dimpled and absolutely boiling over with curiosity.

Actually it wasn’t quite as embarrassing as one might expect. After Libby managed an introduction—“Uhh. This is my grandmother, Gillian McCall, and my great-aunt, Cordelia Wembley. And this is Alex Lockwood. He’s in the writers’ workshop with me and …”—she didn’t have to say anything more. At that point Alex took over and did most of the talking himself.

After he shook hands and said how honored he was to meet the family of Graham McCall, he kept right on talking, explaining how he had always wanted to see the house because he was a fan of Graham McCall’s books, and so were his parents. Watching him, Libby noticed that he seemed different. Almost as if he were another person than he was at school, calmer and more relaxed.

“My folks have been dying to see this place for years,” he told Gillian and Cordelia, “and so when I met Libby, I thought, here’s my chance to see it first and beat them to it. Kind of get one up on my parents.” He stopped and grinned, mostly at Gillian. “It’s kind of good for parents to
be gotten one up on now and then, don’t you think? Keeps them from losing interest.”

Then he complimented Gillian on her dimples—and mentioned who had obviously inherited them—and Cordelia on her dress, and before long both of them were helping Libby show him the rest of the house. The four of them went through the library and Graham’s study, the great hall and dining room and then up the stairs to the billiard room and the upstairs sitting room. And all the way, even while he was climbing the stairs in his strange, awkward way, Alex chatted with Gillian and Cordelia, making them laugh and asking intelligent questions about the art and furniture and architecture, and even about Christopher and his poetry.

That really surprised Libby—that Alex knew about her father’s poetry. And it was obvious that it surprised Gillian and Cordelia too. Even the most successful poets usually aren’t really famous, and Christopher was probably a little less famous than most. But Alex knew quite a lot about him and his poetry, and he also seemed to be aware of other things about poets that you might not expect a Morrison Middle School student to understand. When Gillian offered to take him out to the gazebo where Christopher was working, to be introduced, he said, “Oh, no. I couldn’t interrupt a poet while he’s writing. That’s one of the Ten Commandments, isn’t it? Thou shalt not interrupt the writing of poetry.” And Gillian laughed and said that he was probably right and that if it wasn’t one of the Ten Commandments, it ought to be.

There were no more introductions to make, since Elliott was still at the bookstore, but the tour itself lasted a long
time. Cordelia wanted to show Alex the Great Hall’s overhanging balconies, and Gillian decided he should see her dance studio with its practice bar and mirror-lined walls. Then Gillian and Cordelia went back downstairs, but before she left, Gillian told Alex about the third floor, and of course he had to see that too. Libby hadn’t been planning to mention it.

The old servants’ quarters on the third floor had been empty for a long time, except for Libby’s collections. The first room was mostly ancient Greece with a bit of Roman Empire. The furnishings consisted of a couple of old kitchen tables and a lot of shelves that had once been in the storeroom at Elliott’s store. The walls were covered with pictures, scenes of Greece and Rome, mostly illustrations from magazines, and on the shelves and tables there were several copies of Greek statues, a model of the Parthenon, a collection of old Roman coins (copies actually), and dozens of books and scrapbooks.

Alex walked around the room several times, bending forward to peer at pictures and picking things up to examine them more closely. “Hey, great!” he kept saying. “Wow!” and other enthusiastic remarks. “Did you do all this? I mean, did you collect all this stuff?” he asked finally.

So Libby explained how it had begun years before when she started making collections concerning whatever she happened to be studying. It had all been in one room at first, with a wall or table for each country and subject, but then the whole family got interested, and the collections grew until they spread out over most of the third floor.

The second room, the British Empire, was furnished and decorated much the same as the first, except that an
illustrated time line ran all the way around the room, marked off with dates of all the important events. The illustrations, pictures of all kinds and sizes, were arranged above and below the time line, along with paper figures depicting all the English kings and queens. From each picture or royal figure pieces of yarn led to their proper dates.

The third room was dedicated to the pioneer period. There was a longhorn-steer skull on one wall, a stuffed rattlesnake on a table, and another wall was covered by a huge map of the United States with all the famous pioneer trails drawn across it in different colors.

Alex seemed to be particularly interested in the pioneer room. “This is amazing,” he said after he’d spent a lot of time staring at the rattlesnake and the miniature model of a Conestoga wagon pulled by an ox team. “Where did you get all this stuff?” So Libby explained about the attic. The McCall House attic was enormous and absolutely crammed full of souvenirs that various members of the family had picked up during their travels.

“All of them used to travel a lot,” she told him. “Gillian lived in France when she was studying to be a ballet dancer, and she got to go to most of the countries in Europe. And Cordelia traveled all over the world when she was married to Alfred Wembley. And Elliott has traveled a lot too. But most of the things in the attic used to be Graham’s. He loved to travel, and everywhere he went, he bought all kinds of souvenirs. Gillian says that Graham tried to bring the whole world back to Morrison with him. Like, he got that rattlesnake in Arizona, and the covered wagon is from Texas. Sometimes Gillian says that one of his souvenirs was a ballet dancer, from Paris—meaning herself, of course.”

Alex grinned, “Yeah,” he said. “That’s good. That’s exactly what she looks like. Not many people have grandmothers that look like a souvenir from Paris, but you do.” He went on grinning and nodding as he circled the room once more before he asked, “And all the books?”

“A lot of them are from Graham’s library, but the newest ones are from Elliott’s store. They all let me use things for my displays, but I have to give them back when I’m finished with the project.”

“You mean you change these rooms all the time?”

Libby nodded. “Most of them. Like, this room was China last year, and the British Empire used to be Napoleon. But the Thirties Room doesn’t get changed, because it’s not just a study project. The thirties is more like a hobby. Come on. You might as well see it too.”

The sign on the door said, You Are Now Entering the 1930s. And below the sign there was a collage of pictures of thirties scenes; original pictures painted by Libby and Gillian as well as some cut from magazines or photocopied from the pages of books—scenes from everything from a Laurel and Hardy movie to the Spanish Civil War. And when you opened the door and stepped inside, you found yourself in the past.

The room, which had been the servants’ parlor, was quite large and, unlike the others, was completely furnished. There were chairs, lamps, tables, and sideboards in the sleek, streamlined thirties style, with rounded, waterfall edges. A big old hand-cranked phonograph sat in one corner and a radio in an art deco floor cabinet in another. On the walls were under-construction photos of the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, and others of
famous thirties people, like movie stars such as Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda, and Shirley Temple when she was a very little girl, and the five Dionne sisters, the famous little girls who were the first quintuplets to live to grow up. The shelves held old, dusty books and comic strips, and miniature cars, mostly Model T Fords and Cords and Packards, and in the cabinets were thirties-style dishes and toys, and all kinds of other artifacts.

Alex looked around the room for so long that Libby finally curled up in one of the chairs with a Big Little Book that she hadn’t read for a while,
Dan Dunn and the Lost Gold Mine
. She’d finished the first chapter before he stopped looking and sat down on the couch.

“Incredible, as Mizzo would say,” he said. Libby didn’t say anything, and after a while he went on. “Anyway, I can see now why you’re so smart. What a great way to be educated.”

“It didn’t seem like being educated,” Libby said. “It mostly seemed like a kind of game.”

“Yeah, I know,” Alex said. “That’s what I mean. But why the thirties? Does it have something to do with Graham McCall? I mean, because so many of his books were about the thirties? At least the most famous ones?”

Libby shrugged. “I suppose he had something to do with it. He wrote about the thirties, and he collected a lot of the things in this room. And Gillian says she thinks the people in this house are still living in the thirties.” She smiled. “You know, like in the Great Depression. Gillian hates not having money. She says”—Libby imitated Gillian, rolling her eyes up and sighing dramatically—“I wasn’t cut out to be poor.”

They both laughed. Libby was thinking about what she had just done, acting something out like she always did but just for the family, when Alex pointed to the Big Little Book. “Could I see that for a minute?”

Libby handed him the book and he said, “Hey. Great. I’ve heard about these but I’ve never seen one before.” He leafed through the book quickly and then began to read. Now and then he read a line out loud, chuckling to himself or grinning at Libby.

She watched him and wondered—about a lot of things. By the time he closed the book and put it down, she’d gotten up her nerve to ask the thing she wondered about most.

“Errr!” she said to get his attention, and when he looked up, she asked, “What did you mean when you said you couldn’t write?”

He grinned and raised his eyebrows. “I can’t. At least not so anyone can read it. That’s why I’m in love with my word processor.” He shrugged. “It’s part of the whole problem.”

“Problem?” Libby asked.

His smile went lopsided. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Everybody notices. What it’s called medically is cerebral palsy, but I like to think of it as a kind of a dual personality. See, it’s like this. I have this smooth, cool, brilliant personality that only controls what goes on inside my head, and the rest of me is under the control of this fiendish practical joker. Like, this guy really gets his kicks out of making me look ridiculous.”

Libby knew something about cerebral palsy. “But I thought cerebral palsy—” she began, but Alex interrupted.

“Yeah, I know. Most people who have it are in wheelchairs
or at least are a lot worse off than I am. My doctor says I’m one of the lucky ones.”

He looked away, and his almost constant grin faded. He didn’t seem to be actually talking to anyone when he went on. “Yeah. Real lucky. Too lucky to get much sympathy, but unlucky enough to be in for a hell of a lot of humiliation.”