Stop That Girl (2 page)

The International College of Surgeons is meeting in Vienna, and we take three days driving there through Germany. I like stopping in towns and villages, bounding around cobblestone squares, dipping my hands in fountains, and eating pastries. I decide to stop thinking about home. The afternoon we arrive in Vienna we check in at the Intercontinental across from the park, in plenty of time for the first night’s event, and I’m fitting right in. Dr. Frost takes a long bath and changes into a blue chiffon dress, and I wear a green velvet frock with white gloves, and we set out for our evening together in a taxicab. She smells like hairspray and Chanel No. 5 and talcum all mixed together. Her rings glint in the summer evening light. She taps her little heels.

We pull up at a real palace and proceed up a bank of marble steps. The roar of the doctors from around the globe deepens as we get closer. Dr. Frost grabs the list of those in attendance and scans it. When we cross into the ballroom I look up at my grandmother and she has her nose at full tilt, her forehead high like a half moon. A small orchestra is tuning up at the end of the room. Dr. Frost taps me on the shoulder and points to a tall silvery-haired man standing alone in the crowd. “Go introduce yourself to that man,” she urges me.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” she whispers.

Luckily I don’t have to, because he turns and his face is radiant at the sight of Dr. Frost. “Liz,” he says. He gives her a kiss and looks at her and laughs. “And this is your daughter?”

“My
granddaughter,
” she says.

“Impossible,” he says, taking her hand. “You look wonderful.”

“Ann, this is Dr. Von Allsberg,” she tells me.

I’m more interested in what’s for dinner, and I locate our table next to the dance floor. Eventually a doctor takes the seat next to me, while Dr. Frost talks to the man with the silver hair. My doctor has a waxed mustache and smells like varnish. His name is Dr. Witkovitch and he’s an internist from a small village in the Julian Alps. He tells me he breeds roller pigeons, which come in all colors and are iridescent. They rocket high into the sky, then come rolling down to earth in a free fall. It’s a stunt and they enjoy it. I realize that Dr. Witkovitch is actually a very young man; it’s the stiff mustache, oiled hair, and musty jacket that make him seem outdated and old. I’m thinking Dr. Frost will be impressed to see that I’ve befriended someone so quickly, but she’s not watching. We turn to our plates and slice up thin wafers of veal.

Later the orchestra plays Strauss and I watch while Dr. Von Allsberg waltzes with Dr. Frost. She moves like a swan, head back and eyes fastened on him.

“How do you know Dr. Von Allsberg?” I ask her that night.

“I know many people here.”

“Can we go to Dr. Witkovitch’s roller-pigeon farm?”

“Hardly,” she says, examining her eyes in the mirror. “We have plenty to do as it is.”

“Not even for a day?”

“Where is it?”

“Yugoslavia,” I tell her.

“Ha!”

The next day Dr. Frost leaves me with a babysitting service at the hotel. Over the phone, arranging it, someone calls her Mrs. Frost. “It’s
Dr.
Frost,” she replies. She never lets that mistake slip by. “Whenever your grandfather makes reservations for Dr. and Mr. Frost, they behave very peculiarly, because they assume your grandfather must be the doctor and therefore is married to a man. People would rather believe your grandfather is
married to a man
than think
a woman is a doctor
!”

I am shocked.

“Say, after the conference we’ll take a boat trip on the Danube together; how would that be?” she asks me.

“Good,” I say.

“Better than a bunch of roller chickens?”

“Pigeons!”

“Same difference.”

The babysitter is a glum old Austrian woman who feeds me hard salty meat in a broth with gray dumplings bobbing around in it, and snaps
It-is-not-allowed!
every time I move. By pointing at the park and annoying her with long sentences she doesn’t understand, I get her to take me on a walk, but I’m in such a bad mood I end up throwing rocks at a swan. And I’m disappointed Dr. Witkovitch hasn’t hunted me down to find out if I can visit his farm in Yugoslavia.

The last night in Vienna, the night we are supposed to go to a special Hungarian restaurant and sample goulash, my grandmother breaks the news to me she’s going to an opera with Dr. Von Allsberg instead.

“You can come too, of course,” she tells me. “But I promise you, it will be very long and boring.”

“In that case, I’d love to.”

“Seriously, Ann, I don’t think you’d enjoy it. I’m all for exposing you to cultural events, but you’ll have a lot more fun running around here.”

“Running around?” This makes me grind my teeth, and I close my eyes and imagine my grandmother being speared by headhunters. “What’s the opera, anyway?”

“
Der
Rosenkavalier,
” she tells me. Then she proceeds to offer up the whole story, which is about mistaken identities. If she already knows, why does she need to go? And I’m skeptical about the plot. People can’t be tricked that easily. If I went home in a costume, my mother would still recognize me. It’s changes on the inside she won’t be able to see.

There’s a different babysitter at night, an old bald man with only a pinky and thumb on his right hand. I keep rushing to the window and looking out at the lamps in the park and then at every cab pulling up, to see if my grandmother is returning. At last, very late, I see Dr. Frost and Dr. Von Allsberg strolling together out of the park, their heads close and crowned by lamplight. And it’s bizarre and grotesque because I can see that they’re holding hands.

When the conference ends, I’m glad to see the last of Von Allsberg. My grandmother and I drive to a small village on the Danube where we board the promised boat. It’s a hot May day. We spend hours drifting past castles and abbeys and orchards, sitting on the deck in the sun eating little Napoleons and drinking tea. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

“I wish there had been more women there for you to meet,” my grandmother remarks. “You’re to do great things. No man should stand in your way. And don’t let Roy Weeks tell you otherwise! Think you’d like to be a doctor?” she asks.

“Maybe. What about industrial baking?”

“I want you to set your sights as high as you can. Your mother was sent to fine schools. I don’t want you to think—” She pauses. “Don’t ever let them change your name. I happen to know the Ransoms are a very fine family.”

I narrow my eyes to the sun. “And what’s a fine family like?”

“A fine family, Ann, is one with noble values and good ancestry. Like mine. Congressmen, attorneys and judges, officers in the Civil and Revolutionary wars. Well educated and able to contribute to society.”

“And did they get along with their kids?”

“They passed along the right things,” she said. “I’m glad you and I are getting to know each other. Your mother was what they call a daddy’s girl. Never liked me, even as a baby.”

I look to see if Dr. Frost is kidding. “Babies love their mothers.”

“Not in this case. I’m afraid you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, coming from the pickle she put you in.”

And I say, “Well, I’m afraid you have no idea what I’m talking about, because Mom says all you ever cared about was yourself.”

“I see.” Dr. Frost snorts.

For the rest of the boat ride, when I’m not snapping pictures in every direction, I’m trying to make my grandmother forget what I’ve said. My new sister might entice her. “She’s much nicer than I am,” I say. “She has red hair and speaks many languages. She can do magic tricks and dance.”

“There’ll be no stopping you two,” my grandmother replies.

And finally, the day reaches its obvious conclusion when we get off the boat and Dr. Von Allsberg stands waiting on the dock with flowers. “Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here?”

“Seriously, Ann. Are you my keeper?”

I march behind them, filtering everything I see at the little port on the river through a blaze of fury. Spears are flying, and Dr. Frost is being lowered into a boiling cauldron. Tears are filling my eyes and I don’t want anyone to see them. Suddenly, I get a singular urge to run up behind her and jump on her back, screaming
“Piggyback ride!” Wham.
Her small efficient body tumbles and cracks on the cobblestones.

“God!” she groans.

“Sorry,” I say, standing up.

“What were you thinking?” Von Allsberg says.

“Ulna’s fractured,” Dr. Frost announces.

“Faker!” I say.

“Afraid not,” she says.

We spend hours in a local clinic while they set her arm. It’s a clean break. A neurologist, Von Allsberg supervises the exam, pricking her fingertips and banging a tuning fork on his shoe and then pressing the cool metal to her elbow and palms. How could a bone break so easily? Lying on the table, in the sallow light of the clinic, she looks old, finally—the way a grandmother should.

Now everything is different. My grandmother can’t drive the car—not with a gearshift and a broken right arm—so Dr. Von Allsberg offers to get us back to Copenhagen. We’ll spend just a few more days in Germany and Holland. I’m now stuck in the backseat, where I have to stare at their necks. They talk and laugh and occasionally toss comments back to me like bits for a stray dog. Dr. Frost has bumps and creases on her neck; does Dr. Von Allsberg realize? Somewhere along the way, Von Allsberg buys me a doll—an Alpine girl in a dirndl, clutching a little straw basket—and I immediately detest her like I detest the ballerinas in my room at home. But I have to admit, she’s in a beautiful box. The box is green and has a delicate pattern on it and is lined with velvet.

It’s the polar route home, twelve hours flying over fields of ice, and it’s important to make sure Dr. Frost is as comfortable as possible. There’s no doubt, her arm hurts. She takes the window seat so she won’t be jostled, and the cast rolls between us with no one’s signature on it except mine. I can’t wait to get home.

At last we land in Los Angeles. I’m so excited I forget my carry-on bag and have to run back into the plane. Finally, walking out of customs, beaming with my experiences, returning to my homeland, I spot my mother and Roy in the crowd. They are waving, watching our glorious arrival. They are standing with a baby buggy.

“Mom!” I yell, running to her.

“Hello, Ann!” Roy Weeks says, hugging me first.

I get to my mother. I had imagined her grabbing me and squeezing me like there was no tomorrow, but she looks deflated somehow, an imposter in my mother’s clothing. “Mom?”

“Mother, your arm!” she says.

“Hello, Helen,” Dr. Frost says. “Is this my new granddaughter?”

“Mom, I have a present for you!” I say, digging into my bag.

Everyone’s peering into the buggy. I decide to wait on the souvenirs and wiggle in for a look. I see my sister for the first time. She’s very small, surrounded by the blankets my mother made. She’s wearing the yellow cap I sewed the piping on. I reach in to pick her up.

“No, dear,” my mother says. “Not now. She’s sleepy. Just leave her there.”

I want to hold her.

“Ann, pay attention to your mother,” Roy says. “You don’t know how to hold her yet.”

By then I am holding her just fine. “Percy,” I say.

“Let me have her,” my mother says.

“Just a second.”

“Hand over the little one,” orders Dr. Frost.

“Ann, give her to me
now,
” says Mom.

That’s it. I start to run. After carrying my suitcase all over Europe, she’s only a tiny bundle.

My mother says, “Wait! Stop!”

It was the beginning of my future, and I had the thought at that moment there was no one in the world who would ever understand my version of things. I plunged through the crowd, holding my sister close to me. I heard my mother crying out, my grandmother barking commands, and Roy Weeks shouting, “Stop that girl!” But no one seemed to connect them to me, so no one stood in my way.

After tearing down a flight of stairs and rounding a few corners, I found a vacant phone booth and closed the two of us in. My sister wasn’t frightened. Why should she be? I held her out carefully and looked at her puffy blue eyes. She was staring right at me. Like she really wanted to know who I was and what would become of us. Though she had almost no hair or eyebrows, she looked exactly the way I’d imagined her. She lifted a small fist to her mouth and started sucking on it. “It’s me,” I taught her. “It’s Ann. Ann. Ann.”

It was a good thing I was home. My sister was growing up.

Hope Ranch

The world was opening up for me. I was friends with every kid on the block. I made my rounds. I burned garbage in an incinerator with Cindy and Greg, played tetherball with Joan, sang folk songs on an autoharp with Melanie, hid out in a “bomb shelter” with Janet. I threw rocks at Kevin, David, and Tom and climbed trees with Malcolm. I knew every square in the sidewalk. Some had ×’s in them. Those were Monkey Squares. Leslie and I walked home from school together and we hopped over those.

My sister was two all of a sudden, a pudgy, cheerful two, a messy dishwater blonde with a cowlick, and I was rushing home with a new Creeple-People head for her, a really ugly one made especially for her by a kid in my class with his own Creeple-People factory, when my grandmother, Dr. Frost, pulled up alongside me in her black Corvette convertible. The top was off. “Hop on in,” she called. It was a two-seater. There wasn’t room for Leslie.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

“Well, here I am. Get in.”

“See you tomorrow.” I waved to Leslie.

“Bye.” Leslie waved.

“Don’t think you will,” Dr. Frost said, as we zipped away.

“Why not?”

To my surprise, she passed my street and continued on, in the direction of the freeway.

“Wait, aren’t we going home?”

“I’ve already packed your things; you’re all ready to go,” she said. “Now pipe down. We have a lot to talk about.”

“But I’m giving this to Kathy!”

Dr. Frost wrinkled her nose without even looking at the rubbery head. “She has more toys than any human child needs.”

“And I’m supposed to be working on my Theodore Roosevelt report, which is due Monday, and I’m invited to Jody Gunn’s house today.
For the first time.
”

“My heart bleeds,” she said.

“It
should
bleed!”

“Poor ol’ Mumsy,” she said, in that fake accent I detested. “Why’s everyone always pickin’ on me?”

“And why do I have to call you Mumsy?” I said.

“Because I called my grandmother Mumsy, and so did my mother, and so on. What’s wrong with it?”

“Why can’t I call you Granny, or Grandma, or Gran?”

“I never want to be called those things. They’re what you call an old washerwoman.”

I hated having to call anyone
Mumsy.
So I thought of her as Dr. Frost or just
the Doctor.
Last time, Mom told me, “The Doctor is coming to get you tomorrow. It’s not particularly convenient, but I don’t know how to say no. She emotionally pulverizes me.”

And I’d said, “What if
I
emotionally pulverize you?”

And she’d said, “You’ll have learned from the best.”

Now Dr. Frost was driving too fast for my comfort. I asked her to slow down.

“What’s wrong, can’t stand a little excitement?”

“I feel carsick,” I said.

“Hold on to your hat and watch the road.”

My grandmother was passing everyone else on the highway, even driving on the shoulder when necessary. My hair was whipping around my head, and my lips were chapping faster than I could lick them.

“We’re gonna beat the light!” Dr. Frost shouted into the din. “I’m not stopping until we get there.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“Dig around in the back. I brought a little picnic.”

I was afraid to unloosen the seat belt and look, as if I’d fly out of the car. I groped behind me and found a paper bag and pulled it up to the front. In it was a shriveled head of celery, a blackened pear, three pieces of Roman Meal bread with mold on the edges, and a rind of cheese that was as hard as a hood ornament. I felt around to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t.

“Can’t we stop to eat?” I said.

“Ann, life is tough,” she shouted. “Get used to it!”

We followed the coast road north and ended up in Santa Barbara just under two hours later. Still no time for a square meal. We pulled off the highway and zoomed under an arch welcoming us to HOPE RANCH, past an artificial lake full of birds, a golf course, and a number of large houses with iron gates or circular drives, and then disappeared into an oak forest in a ravine climbing a hill. “I’ve picked every house your grandfather and I ever lived in,” she said. “I have an eye. You start with the best area. Then you find a place a little off-market, a little tattered around the edges. In other words, not a showcase. If you buy a place like that in the best part of town, you’ll never go wrong.”

I filed away her real estate tip for later. “So, you and Granddad are moving up here?”

“Your grandfather and I are finished.”

“Finished? Good.” One of my grandfather’s hobbies was refinishing wood. He often talked about the finish on various objects. I thought she was saying that she and Granddad were all shiny and fixed up.

We drove on, pulling out of the grove of oaks into a countrylike area with no sidewalks, just horse paths by the road. We turned onto a short dead-end street and pulled up beside a dark hedge and a heavy iron gate. “Open it, Ann. It’s unlocked.”

I did as told. Still couldn’t see any house. The air smelled of pine sap and rotting leaves. I trotted back to the car and climbed in, and the Doctor and I roared up the driveway and parked outside a garage with a rumpled door, paint peeling in curly little strips.

“You and Granddad will have to refinish it,” I said.

Dr. Frost glared at me. “Weren’t you listening? I just told you, we’re finished.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m never spending another night under the same roof as that man, as long as I live, is what I mean,” Dr. Frost said.

“You’re sick of Granddad?”

“I certainly am. Now let’s grab our bags and get inside.”

I could hardly take this in. My grandfather was my favorite. He liked to fly his own plane and hunt for uranium in the desert with a Geiger counter. He laughed when I told him things. I’d describe kids at school and he’d draw cartoons of them, and I’d end up laughing so hard I would wheeze and snort like a donkey.

I followed her up a mossy brick walkway, and through the foliage, in the dimming light, I could at last see the house. It was a long Spanish-style place, with flowerpot tiles on the roof and thick plaster walls. The heavy wooden door was fringed with old brass hinges and had a tarnished knocker the shape of a lion’s head. She fumbled with her keys and the slab creaked open, the dark house emitting a cool, musty draft like from a cave.

“Electricity’s not on yet,” she said. “Here.” She poked a flashlight at me, an old crusty one with a failing beam unless I held it at precisely the right angle. Thus equipped, we started our tour, moving through the house room by room. There was a large formal dining room with oak plank floors, lamps shaped like candles on the wall, and a large picture window. Through a swinging door was the “butler’s pantry.” In my ray it looked like a kitchen, with its sink and dishwasher and counters and cupboards, but through another swinging door was the real kitchen. Then to a laundry room, with multiple sinks and bins and two built-in ironing boards, and a back bedroom and bath, which the Doctor called “the maid’s quarters.” It had a bell on the wall, and she said we could ring it from any room in the house.

“Are you going to have a maid?”

“Are you joking? I spent every penny I have on this place. Do you have any idea what that man has done to me?”

“No.”

“I think you’re old enough to hear these things. It’s realistic. Life as it really happens. No girl should grow up in a fairy tale. You know where he was, when I was nearly dead in the Chicago Lying-In Hospital that winter, after having a cesarean with no anesthesia? Your mother being ten pounds nearly killed me. You know where he was?”

“How would I?”

“He was out in Denver, Colorado, living with some homosexual. Oh, he never admitted it, but there he was, taking a new job just before the baby was due, and next thing I find out he’s shacking up with a man. And I know what kind of man this man was.”

“What man?”

“Then he lied to me and said he was living alone. And then he completely lost interest in you-know-what. Couldn’t admit what he was, that’s part of the problem. Was ashamed of himself.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“And I lived with it, thirty more years. Like nothing was wrong. Mending his socks, doing his laundry, even while I was in medical school, with all that work of my own.”

“I’m
really
hungry.”

“Come on then,” she said, and I followed her back through the dark house, past the front entryway, past a living room that looked, in my sweeping beam, the size of a gymnasium. Then down a long pitch-black hall past several empty bedrooms and bathrooms until we came to the last and largest bedroom, which now had two cots in it and a number of boxes and suitcases. “This will be our headquarters until the furniture comes,” she told me.

“When?”

“Next Tuesday.”

“I’m not staying until then!”

“We have many things to do. Time will fly.”

“But we’re having a quiz Friday about protons and electrons!”

“You won’t miss anything. I can teach you more in an hour than you’ll learn all week. Now help me open this box.”

I held the light while she pried open a large shipping box. In it were hundreds of cellophane-wrapped free samples of zwieback baby biscuits, and she ran her fingers through them with pleasure, like a crazed pirate fondling her doubloons.

“Baby biscuits?” I said.

“They’re an excellent food.”

I tore one open. It dissolved in my mouth like sand. “How old are these?”

“Don’t be fussy,” she replied.

I stood in the corner coughing out zwieback particles, while Dr. Frost bungled around her cot.

“In the morning the Hoopengarners are coming over. They have a daughter your age, and Dr. Hoopengarner is going to be a colleague. Helped me find my new office, on State Street.”

I was pointing my flashlight at her head.

“This is a very important new beginning for me. They ain’t through with me yet! When Dad died a few years ago, he didn’t have much, but the little bit he left me went into this house. It’s the first thing of my own I’ve had since I was a girl.”

“Bully for you.”

“What?”

“Bully. It’s what Theodore Roosevelt used to say.”

“Would you get that thing off me?” Dr. Frost said. “I brought some candles. Why don’t you pull them out of that bag.”

“Is there a phone here?”

“Nope. We’re roughing it until we settle in.” She lit the candles and placed them on the windowsill, and since I was feeling cold I climbed into the sleeping bag she’d unrolled on my cot. It smelled old and mildewy, and there was a towel folded up for my head.

“I want to go home as soon as possible,” I said. “Probably tomorrow.”

“Ann, we’ll work out the best deal we can. You’ll never fit in with your mother’s new family; it’s treachery. The school here is excellent. I’ve already met with the sixth-grade teacher. Katerina Hoopengarner will be in your class.”

An uncomfortable feeling rippled through me. “I fit in fine. Why are you saying that?”

“With Weeks? That two-bit weasel?”

“Roy’s not a two-bit weasel. He helps me with home-work and he makes good pancakes. And he’s sick of exploiting the land! He’s getting a new job.”

“Is that so? Where?”

“In a library,” I told her.

In a doctorly way, which she must have practiced while visiting leper colonies in China the year before, she came over and sat on the edge of my cot. “Ann, you know I was the first person you saw when you were born. I was standing right there. You bonded to me. The way baby ducks bond, on sight. Even to a puppet the shape of a duck. Doesn’t matter. You saw
me.
I had your mother when I was only twenty, so I’m young enough to be your mother. I’m not saying I was perfect, first time around. I was too young. And I had no idea what your grandfather would do to me. My God, bring a girl from a big warm family like mine into that cold industrial Ohio winter surrounded by a bunch of grim Germans with their strange traditions and horrible food? It was like a bad dream. Didn’t see anything wrong with plopping me down there and taking off for his career. The ego on that man could sink a ship. And your mother and I didn’t get along that well, as I’m sure you know. It was tough. I’d take the train home anytime I could; Dad would make sure I had the fare.