Authors: Lois Lowry
"Probably he won't even come, dumb old Norman," I said, as we rang the bell and opened the door. Millie liked for us to ring first and then let ourselves in.
But he did. Me and Veronica was barefoot in Millie Bellows's kitchen, hunkered down and scrubbing at that dirty old floor, which probably had never been washed since several husbands ago, when we heard the doorbell ring. Veronica jumped up and almost fell because her feet slid on the soapy floor.
"You don't have to go," I grumbled at her. "It's Millie Bellows's house. Let her answer her own dumb door."
"I have to explain to her about Norman," Veronica said, and rushed out of the kitchen, leaving me scraping away at cruddy stuff by the corner of the refrigerator. I grabbed up a knife from the kitchen table and pried at the sticky old wad of spilled food, pretending it was old Norman Cox and I could just pry him up and throw him away.
I could hear them talking in the other room, Veronica and Millie Bellows and Norman. Millie Bellows was quarrelsome as always, complaining that she didn't want that Cox boy in her house, but Veronica was talking all sweet, saying as how we needed his muscles for the heavy work. Next thing I knew, there they were in the kitchen, Veronica and Norman, and Millie was mumbling and shuffling back to her chair in front of the TV.
Just you say one nasty thing, Norman, I thought, glaring at him. Just call me one name, and I'm gone. You can do this old floor your whole self and I don't care none.
But he didn't say nothing. He just stood there, shuffling his old sneakers, while Veronica explained to him about the floor and handed him a scrub brush and a pail of soapy water. Then he knelt down and started in on the corner by the back door.
We worked all morning. Mostly we was pretty silent. Sometimes we'd stand up to dump the dirty water and run fresh from the sink, and to rinse our rags and brushes out.
Sometimes Veronica tried to make conversation. "I declare," she said, all cheerful, "have you ever seen a floor this filthy? I'm amazed she doesn't have cockroaches, aren't you?"
"Probably does, in summer," Norman said.
I didn't even enter into that conversation. I just glared at my corner of the floor and scrubbed at it like I wanted to murder it. Underneath all the dirt, a yellow speckled linoleum was commencing to appear. If
me and Veronica was
alone,
like usual, we would've been talking about a million different things, movies and books and school and gossip. But Norman ruined all of that.
"You know what, Norman?" Veronica said, as she rinsed her rags at the sink. "Millie Bellows had a brother named Howard when she was a girl. And when Howard was fourteen, he fell through the ice in the river and was drowned. Isn't that the saddest thing?" She took her rinsed rags back to her bucket and knelt down on the floor again.
Norman grunted something. Then he said, "A deer went through the ice last winter. Right near the edge, down by the Mobil station. Dogs chased him and he ran out on the ice where it was thin."
"Oh, that's a shame," Veronica said. "Deer are so pretty." She moved her bucket and hitched herself across the floor to start on a new place.
"Remember we saw them two does with babies in the meadow last spring?" I said real loud to Veronica. "Like a couple of little Bambis? We oughta go back to that same spot this spring, I bet we'll see some more of them. Let's start out real early in the morning. We can take sandwiches and stuff." I felt this need to start a conversation with Veronica which would leave Norman out and remind him that me and Veronica had all this private stuff we was accustomed to doing together.
But Veronica was doing just the opposite. She was shifting things so they always included Norman. "Do you ever do that, Norman?" she asked, all polite. "Go
off outdoors for a whole day, and take your lunch?"
I interrupted so's he wouldn't even have a chance to answer. "Let's do it on a Sunday, Veronica," I said. See, I knew that the Coxes always had to go to church on Sunday morning. "We can take Gunther. I don't believe Gunther's ever had a chance to see a live deer close up, only the ones on them nature shows on TV." I stood up and walked real careful over the wet floor to the sink, to empty my bucket. While the water was running, I said real loud, aiming my voice at Norman, "Our family doesn't go to church so me and Veronica have all this free time on Sunday mornings."
"We go at Easter," Veronica said. "And at Christmas." She was doing it again: saying stuff that would include Norman, and I couldn't figure out why. All of a sudden I hated Veronica.
Millie Bellows interrupted us by coming to the kitchen door and demanding tea. Talk about rude; she could
see
that the kitchen floor was all sloshy and wet and that we was in the middle of hard work on it. But she insisted she wanted tea
right then,
and Veronica got up to put the kettle on. When the tea was ready, I dried my hands and took it in to her. Then I sat there with her and looked at the old photographs for the billionth time. But this time I didn't even listen to her stories about those olden days, nor ask any questions. I was-listening to the voices of Norman and Veronica in the kitchen, talking to each other while they scrubbed at the floor.
After a while Veronica came in all smiles, and said
that the floor was done. "Now that it's clean it's the prettiest yellow linoleum, Millie," she said. "And as soon as it's dry, Norman says he'll put the wax on."
"I guess I'll just go on home then," I said, "since you don't need me. I have a lot of stuff to do."
No one said anything. So I stood up and put my jacket on. Before I left, I said in a cool, cruel voice, "Don't be late for lunch, Veronica. Because you and your father have to take that trip this afternoon."
Then I walked home all alone.
I didn't see Veronica and Mr. Bigelow leave for Meadowhill. I heard the car drive away, but I was in Gunther's room getting him cleaned up and dressed to go for an outing with me and Sweet-Ho. That's what Sweet-Ho called it, an outing. "Maybe we'll have us a little outing along the river, Gunther," she said, "and see if we can find us some ducks to feed. We'll take along some bread, how's that? You and me and Rabble, off for an outing."
"Okay," Gunther said. So he didn't even notice that his daddy and Veronica headed off in another direction.
In the other car, the old one that Sweet-Ho used for the shopping and all, we set Gunther up beside Sweet-Ho in his car seat, all buckled in, and opened the window wide beside him. Gunther always got to feeling carsick if the window wasn't open, so we was accustomed to being cold in the car. It was a choice of
being cold or having old Gunther throw up, maybe right in your lap.
He sat there in his green corduroy jacket and his green hat with earflaps on, and a plastic bag of bread scraps in his lap.
Sweet-Ho drove real careful down to the road beside the river, and she let Gunther beep the car horn now and then, leaning over from his car seat. Gunther took that responsibility real serious, and only beeped when Sweet-Ho told him he could.
"Daddy lets me sit on his lap and steer," he said, looking over at Sweet-Ho so's she would know it was a question he was asking, though he didn't come right out and ask if he could do it with her.
"Daddy's tall," I explained to him from the back seat, "so it boosts you up when you sit on his lap. But Sweet-Ho's not tall enough for that."
"Oh," Gunther said, nodding his head.
We drove along the river road for some miles and saw plenty of crows and stuff in the trees, but the river was empty and gray. No ducks.
Gunther kept peering out, hiccuping now and then, watching for the ducks and clutching his bundle of bread scraps tight. I felt sorry for his disappointment.
"We should've come last week," I grumbled.
Gunther wiggled around in his seat so's he could look back at me. "They're coming back," he said.
"It sure don't look like it to me, Gun," I told him, trying to let him down easy.
"I don't mean
now.
But sometime. Like people.
People go away, and then they come back. Ducks do, too. They always come back. You have to save up your bread and be ready."
"It's getting too cold, I guess," Sweet-Ho said. "All the ducks went someplace warmer. I expect they're all at Disney World for a vacation." Gunther giggled. He knew she was just joking.
"At Disney World a big Mickey Mouse comes out and shakes your hand," Gunther said. "I saw it on TV. I wouldn't be scared if I went there, would you?"
"Nope," Sweet-Ho said.
"Me neither," I said. "I'd just say, 'How do you do, Mickey?'"
"Do you think we can go there sometime?" Gunther asked.
"Well," Sweet-Ho told him, "we'll have to ask your daddy. Maybe someday we can."
Just when the river started to get boring, since the ducks was all gone, Sweet-Ho told Gunther he could beep once more, and she turned onto another road and we ended up at Fowler's Corners. It's not really a town, just a few houses and a gas station and a little diner. She pulled into the parking lot in front of the diner and said we could go in and get something warm to drink.
"I only want milk," Gunther said.
So when we got settled in a booth and got Gunther's hat off, Sweet-Ho ordered coffee for herself, hot chocolate for me, and a glass of milk for Gunther. It was a pretty nice diner, with shiny Formica tops on the counter and the tables, and on the wall hung a calendar with a real colorful picture of two puppies in a basket. Somebody had written "Debbie loves Brendon forever" with ballpoint pen on the wall beside my seat. On the table there was a sugar jar with one of them tin tops shaped like a volcano.
While the waitress was off getting our order, Gunther announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Sweet-Ho took him, and while she was gone I polished the top of the sugar jar with my fingertip. I could see my face in it, all flattened out and looking something like a prehistoric caveperson. I wished Veronica was there so's she could be a caveperson, too.
The waitress came back while Sweet-Ho and Gunther was gone, and put our things on the table.
"Does your mother take cream?" she asked, and I told her yes, please.
"You look like your mother," the waitress said, as she set down two little paper cups of cream. "Except for your hair color. That sure is pretty hair."
"Thank you. Ginger-colored, it's called," I told her.
"I know a family that has five kids, and every single one of them has bright red hair. But your brother didn't get it, that ginger-color, though, did he?"
"No, he just has that old brown."
"Well, for a boy it don't matter now, does it?" the waitress said, and laid out three paper napkins.
I shook my head. In the back of the diner, I could
see the bathroom door open. Sweet-Ho came out, leaning over to zip Gunther's green jacket.
"My brother and sister both got brown hair," I said. Then I added, real quick, "My sister and my daddy are off on a different outing today."
"That's nice," the waitress said, and then she moved away, smiling at Gunther while Sweet-Ho lifted him back up on the seat of the booth.
"You all have a nice day," the waitress called when we left.
Gunther fell asleep in his car seat while we was driving home, so we didn't have any more horn-beeping. I got sleepy, too, in the backseat, and I closed my eyes and thought about the lie I told the waitress: the lie that Veronica was my sister. If only it was true. I wasn't mad at Veronica anymore, and I wanted my lie to be true.
When we got home, Sweet-Ho carried Gunther into the house and laid him down on the couch. Then she set about making supper, and it was already commencing to get dark outside when Mr. Bigelow and Veronica got back.
Veronica ran upstairs to change her clothesâher daddy made her wear a dress to the hospitalâand I followed her and went into her room. "I brought you this," I said. "Me and Gunther and Sweet-Ho went for an outing and we stopped at a diner." I gave her two little toothpicks with fringed paper on their ends which I took from a box beside the cash register at the diner.
"Thanks." She took them and stuck them into a corner of her mirror frame, next to one of the Halloween snapshots. "I thought you were mad at me."
"Not anymore."
She zipped up her jeans and started looking around for a shirt. "I couldn't bring you anything because we didn't stop anyplace."
"Not even for a Pepsi or nothing?"
Veronica pulled a sweatshirt over her head and then grabbed her ponytail through. "There was this lounge at the hospital and we had a drink there, from a machine. I had to have grape because it was all out of everything else."
"Is that all you did, just sat and had grape?" I felt funny asking about her visit to the hospital.
"We walked around some, outside. They have benches and stuff. We sat on a bench and talked."
"What did you talk about?" I couldn't remember Mrs. Bigelow talking much, ever. Just smiling.
"The weather. And Daddy told her about Gunther wearing my ballerina costume. He made it into a funny story. We didn't tell her about Millie Bellows getting hit by the stone, of course. Just about Gunther dancing."
"Did she laugh?"
Veronica shook her head. She sat down on the bed to tie her sneakers. "No. She just kept watching while we talked. She didn't say much, just nodded her head. And her hair looked horrible, like she doesn't comb it."
"After you walked around, then you just got back in the car to come home?"
"No, then sheâmy motherâwent back to where she stays. A nurse took her. And Daddy went off in a room to talk to the doctors. I had to wait in the lounge. I read a bunch of old
Good Housekeepings
"
"What did the doctors say? Did he tell you?"
"Just that she has a lot of medication, and it makes her walk slow and not talk much. And they said she's getting better."
It didn't sound better to me, not combing her hair and not talking. Before, she always kept her hair nice, at least. But I didn't say that to Veronica. "Was it fun, going there?" I asked her.
"No. I hated it."