Mary Anne Saves the Day (2 page)

“Hey, what are you guys? Elephants? Don't you ever forget anything?”

“Well, it
has
been a problem,” said Kristy.

“I don't believe this!” cried Claudia. “
You
” (she pointed accusingly at Kristy) “break one of our rules, and everyone jumps on
me
! I didn't do anything. I'm innocent.”

“
This
time,” muttered Stacey.

“Hey,” said Claudia. “If you're so desperate to have new friends here in Stoneybrook, don't argue with the ones you've got.”

“Is that a threat?” exclaimed Stacey. “Because if it is, I don't need you guys. Don't forget where I'm from.”

“We
know
, we
know
— New York. It's all you talk about.”

“I was
go
ing to say,” Stacey went on haughtily, “before I was interrupted, that I'm tough. And I'm a fighter, and I don't need anybody. Not stuck-up job-hogs” (she looked at Claudia) “or bossy know-it-alls” (Kristy) “or shy little babies.” Me.

“I am not a shy little baby!” I said, but as soon as I said it, my chin began to tremble and my eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, shut up,” Kristy said crossly. Sometimes she has very little patience with me.

But I'd had it. I jumped to my feet. “No,
you
shut up,” I shouted at Kristy. “And you, too,” I said to Stacey. “I don't care how tough you are or how special you think you are because of your dumb diabetes, you have no right —”

“Don't call Stacey's diabetes dumb!” Claudia cut in.

“And don't bother to stick up for me,” Stacey shouted back at Claudia. “Don't do me any favors.”

“No problem,” Claudia replied icily.

“Hey,” said Kristy suddenly. “Who were you calling a bossy know-it-all before?”

“Who do you think?” replied Stacey.

“Me?!”
Kristy glanced at me.

“Don't tell me to shut up and then expect me to help you,” I told Kristy.

Kristy looked as if someone had just informed her that scientists had discovered that the moon was in fact made of green cheese.

“Maybe I am shy,” I said loudly, edging toward the door. “And maybe I am quiet, but you guys can
not
step all over me. You want to know what I think? I think you, Stacey, are a conceited snob; and you, Claudia, are a stuck-up job-hog; and
you, Kristin Amanda Thomas, are the biggest, bossiest know-it-all in the world, and I don't care if I never see you again!”

I let myself out of Claudia's room, slamming the door behind me so hard that the walls shook. Then I ran down the stairs. Behind me, I could hear Claudia, Stacey, and Kristy yelling at one another. As I reached the Kishis' front hall, Claudia's door slammed again. Two more pairs of feet thundered down the stairs.

I ran home, half hoping that either Kristy or Stacey would call after me. But neither one did.

The last thing I wanted to do after our big fight was eat dinner with Dad, but he expects us to have a proper meal in the evening. Sometimes he fixes it, sometimes I do, but we always sit down in the kitchen and eat dinner at six-thirty.

Luckily, Dad was still at work when I got home from Claudia's that night. I was crying, and in no mood to speak to anybody. I slammed angrily around the kitchen. I took a pan of leftover pot roast out of the refrigerator, slammed the fridge shut, stuck the pan in the oven, and slammed the oven shut. Then I got out plates and glasses, knives and forks, and slammed two cabinets and a drawer. I banged the things down on the table one at a time. Eight bangs.

Then I went upstairs to wash my face. By the time Dad got home, I looked a lot better and felt a little better.

“Mary Anne?” he called.

“Coming,” I answered. I headed down the stairs, my hair neatly combed, my blouse tucked carefully into my skirt. Dad says it's important to look nice at mealtime.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, Mary Anne.” He leaned over so I could kiss his cheek. “Is dinner started?”

“Yes.” (Dad hates when people say
yeah
. He also hates
shut up
,
hey
,
gross
,
stupid
, and a long list of other words that creep into my vocabulary whenever I'm not around him.) “I'm heating up the pot roast.”

“That's fine,” said Dad. “Let's just toss a salad. That will make a nice dinner.”

Dad and I got out lettuce, tomatoes, a cucumber, and some carrots. We chopped and tossed silently. In no time, a crisp salad was sitting in a glass bowl in the center of the kitchen table. My father took the pot roast out of the oven and served up two portions.

We sat down and bowed our heads while Dad said grace. At the end, just before the “Amen,” he asked God to watch over Alma. (Alma is my mother.) He does that before every meal, as far as I know, and sometimes I think he overdoes things. After all, my mother has been dead for almost eleven years. I bless her at night before I
go to sleep, and it seems to me that that ought to be enough.

“Well, how was your day, Mary Anne?”

“Fine,” I replied.

“How did you do on your spelling test?”

I took a bite of salad, even though I wasn't a bit hungry. “Fine. I got a ninety-nine. It was —”

“Mary Anne,
please
don't speak with your mouth full.”

I swallowed. “I got a ninety-nine,” I repeated. “It was the highest grade in the class.”

“That's wonderful. I'm very proud of you. Your studying paid off.”

I nodded.

“Did you have a meeting of your club this afternoon?” he asked.

“Yeah …
yes
.”

Kristy, Claudia, and Stacey are all surprised that Dad allows me to be in the club and to do so much baby-sitting. What they don't know is that the only reason he likes our business is that he thinks it teaches me responsibility and how to plan ahead, save money, and that sort of thing.

“What went on? Anything special?” Dad attempted a smile.

I shook my head. There was no way I was going to tell him about the fight we'd had.

“Well,” said Dad, trying hard to make conversation, “my case went … went very well today. Quite smoothly, really. I feel certain that we're going to win.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I didn't know what case he was talking about, but I had a feeling I
should
have known. He'd probably told me about it. “That's great, Dad.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

We ate in silence for several minutes.

“This case is interesting because it demonstrates the extreme importance of honesty in business dealings,” he said finally. “Always remember that, Mary Anne. Be scrupulously honest and fair. It will serve you in good stead.”

“All right, Dad.”

We ate in silence again, and it dawned on me that Dad and I sat across from each other at that table twice a day each weekday and three times a day on the weekends. If a meal averaged half an hour, that meant we spent over four hundred hours a year eating together, trying to make conversation — and we barely knew what to say to each other. He might as well have been a stranger I just happened to share food with sixteen times a week.

I pushed my pot roast around my plate.

“You're not eating, Mary Anne,” my father said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Are you sure? You weren't filling up on snacks at the Kishis', were you?”

“No, Dad, I sw — I promise. I guess I'm just not very hungry.”

“Well, try to eat your vegetables, at least. Then you may start your homework.”

Dad made starting my homework sound like some kind of reward.

I forced down as much as I could manage. Then my father turned the radio on and listened to classical music while we cleaned up the kitchen. At last, I escaped to my bedroom.

I sat down at my desk and opened my math book. A clean sheet of paper lay before me, along with two sharpened pencils and a pink eraser. But I couldn't concentrate. Before I had made so much as a mark on the paper, I got up and flopped down on my bed.

I remembered calling my friends: a conceited snob; a stuck-up job-hog; and the biggest, bossiest know-it-all in the world. I sincerely wished I hadn't said those things.

Then I remembered being called a baby and being told to shut up. I sincerely wished
Stacey and Kristy hadn't said
those
things.

I wished I could talk to somebody. Maybe I could phone Claudia. The only thing
she'd
said that afternoon was for me not to call Stacey's diabetes dumb, which really wasn't mean. But I am not allowed to use the phone after dinner unless I'm discussing homework.

I could ask my father for special permission to use the phone for non-homework business, but he'd want to know what that business was.

I sighed.

I glanced out my window. The side window of my bedroom looks right into the side window of Kristy's bedroom next door. Her light was off, the room dark.

I sat cross-legged on my bed and gazed around. No wonder Stacey had called me a baby. My room looks like a nursery. There's no crib or changing table, but basically the room hasn't changed since I was three. It's decorated in pink and white, which my father had just naturally assumed every little girl would like. The truth is, I like yellow and navy blue. Pink is one of my least favorite colors.

The curtains, which are ruffly, are made of pink flowered fabric and are tied back with pink ribbons. The bedspread matches the curtains. The
rug is pale pink shag, and the walls are white, with pink baseboards.

Living in my room is like living inside a cotton-candy machine.

What bothers me most, though, is what's on the walls — or rather, what isn't on them. I've spent a lot of time in Kristy's and Claudia's rooms, and I've been in Stacey's room twice, and I've decided that you can tell a lot about the people who use those rooms just by looking at the walls. For example, Kristy loves sports, so her walls are covered with posters about the Olympics and pictures of gymnasts and football players. Claudia is an artist and her own work hangs everywhere. She changes it often, taking down old paintings or drawings and putting up new ones. And Stacey, who misses New York more than she'll admit, has tacked up a poster of the city at night, another of the Empire State Building, and a map of Manhattan.

Here's what're on my walls: a framed picture of my parents and me, taken the day I was christened; a framed picture of Humpty Dumpty (before he broke); and two framed pictures of characters from
Alice in Wonderland
. They are all framed in pink.

Do you know what I would
like
to have on
my walls? I've thought about this very carefully, just in case my father should ever lose his mind and say I can redecorate. I'm not allowed to put up posters because the thumbtacks would make too many holes in the wall. But assuming Dad was really bonkers and didn't care about holes, I'd put up a giant poster of a kitten or maybe several kittens, a big photo of the members of the Baby-sitters Club, a poster of New York City, and maybe one of Paris.

I would take down Humpty and Alice, but leave the picture of my family.

My gaze drifted from my walls to the window. I snapped to attention as a light went on in Kristy's room. Maybe I could wave to her and let her know that as far as I was concerned, the fight was over. But Kristy pulled her shade down quickly, not even looking out the window.

I checked my watch. It was almost eight o'clock. In another hour, I could try signaling to her with my flashlight. I worked out a flashlight code so that we can “talk” at night without the telephone. One of us usually flashes to the other shortly after nine o'clock. At that time, my father has already said good night to me. I'm free to read in bed until 9:30, but I know he won't check on me. Kristy and I have been signaling to
each other for a long time and we have never been caught.

I finished my homework and changed into my nightgown. By five minutes to nine I was in bed, reading a very exciting book called
A Wrinkle in Time
.

Dad stuck his head in the door. “Oh, good. I see you're all ready for bed.”

I nodded.

“What are you reading?”

“
A Wrinkle in Time
. It's on Mr. Counts's reading list.” (Mr. Counts is the school librarian.)

“Oh, that's fine. Well, good night, Mary Anne.”

“Good night, Dad.”

He closed my door. I could hear his footsteps as he went back downstairs.

I know my dad loves me, and I know the reason he's strict is that he wants to show everybody I can be a well-brought-up young lady even without a mother, but sometimes I just wish things were different.

I took my flashlight out of my desk drawer, turned off my light, and tiptoed to my window, waiting for Kristy to do the same. I planned to signal
I'M SORRY
to her. I stood at my window for fifteen minutes, but her shade remained drawn.

I knew then that she was
very
angry.