The Cybil War (2 page)

“Simon, look at me.” She sat down on a chair so that their heads were level. “Now your dad is gone. We've been over this and over this. No, don't turn away. Your dad is gone and I do not know where he is or when he's coming back. Do you understand me?”

He tried to look away, but she held his head in place with her hand. He blinked uneasily. He was aware his mom had been talking to him about his father's absence, probably for days, but for the first time he realized what she was talking about.

“When will he be back?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, where has he gone?”

“All I know is this. He is gone. His clothes are gone. The car is gone. The camping equipment is gone. Half the money in our bank account is gone.”

“It's business—it's vacation—” he stuttered.

“No, he's gone.”

It was more than he could stand—that his father, the only person he could not live without, could actually decide to live without him. The earth seemed to tremble with a terrible inner quake.

“Maybe he's dead,” he said, his voice reflecting the quivering world.

“He's not dead.”

“How do you know? He could be. People die. Their bodies are never found.”

“It turns out he's been talking to Mitch Wilson about leaving for months.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, he talked about solitude and about getting away from the confusion and corruption of the world and going back to the simple way of life and

about living off the land and about—”

“It has to be more than that. It has to be!”

Suddenly Simon turned, pulling away from his mother. He looked down. He was clutching the baby tree in both hands as if he were trying to choke it. He ran from the room.

“Simon, he'll be back sometime. I know he will,” his mother called. “It's just something he's going through, and we'll get along.” She followed him to the back door. “Simon, I can't give you answers because he didn't give them to me!”

Simon ran into the yard and threw his baby tree as far as he could. He didn't see it land because his hands were over his eyes, but in his mind that baby tree went so high and so far nobody ever saw it again.

When it came to the reading of tributes to trees, Simon was the first to volunteer. He read in a loud, hard voice.

He had to lean close to read his writing. He had pressed down so hard with his pencil that he'd gone through the paper in three places.

There was a gasp from Miss Ellis. “That is enough!” She made her way to the front of the room in three steps. She took the paper from him so violently that she tore off the corner. Then she ripped the rest into pieces and threw them into the wastebasket.

“Sit, Simon,” she said.

He had heard kinder tones used on dogs. He walked back to his desk with his head held so high he stumbled over Billy Bonfili's foot.

In a voice still trembling with rage, Miss Ellis called on Wanda Sanchez. Wanda made a lot of noise walking to the front of the room because she, too, was outraged about Simon's tribute to trees.

Her composition went:

“Thank
you,
Wanda,” Miss Ellis said.

“You're
welcome,
Miss Ellis.”

When all the kids had read their tributes, Miss Ellis announced they would have a vote on whose paper was the best. Wanda Sanchez, the favorite, got nine votes. Tony Angotti got five. He had written a comic tribute to trees, pointing out that if there were no trees, birds would have to build nests on top of people's heads.

“Oh, Miss Ellis,” Cybil Ackerman called from the back of the room when the voting was over.

“Yes, Cybil?”

“You forgot to call Simon's name.”

There was a pause while Miss Ellis inhaled and exhaled. “I don't think anyone wants to vote for Simon's paper,” she said, “do they?”

She sounded as if she were asking if anyone wanted to vote for a fungus infection.

Simon put his hand up so high his arm hurt.

There was another icy pause. “Simon Newton—two votes.” It was as if the North Pole had spoken.

Simon swirled around in his seat. He could not believe he had gotten another vote. Who would dare risk Miss Ellis's displeasure?

Cybil's hand was in the air. As Simon looked at her, she grinned and crossed her eyes.

Love washed over him with the force of a tidal wave. He turned back to the front of the room. He lowered his hand and put it over his chest. He had not known it was possible to love like this.

His eyes blurred. His heart was beating so hard he expected to look down and actually see it pounding, like in cartoons.

He glanced back once again at Cybil Ackerman and knew he would love her until the day he died.

“Simon!
Simon!
”

He looked up. “What?”

“Would you like to tell the class the meaning of the next poem?”

Simon was sitting with his hand on his chest, over the very spot that had pounded so hard years ago. He was surprised to see it was Miss McFawn in front of the class instead of Miss Ellis.

“Would you like to tell the class the meaning of the next poem?” she repeated.

He looked down at the blurred image of his English book. He decided to tell the truth. “No,” he said.

I
t was after school, and Tony Angotti and Simon Were standing at the water fountain. Tony had forgotten the insult of being cast as a dill pickle, and he was telling Simon that today was his sister's birthday and he couldn't go home until five o'clock. He began imitating his sister. He could do this perfectly.

“Tony spoils eeeeeeverything. He spies on us and he copies what we say. I don't even want to have a paaaaaarty if Tony's going to be here. He spoils eeeeeeverything.”

He was warming to the imitation when Harriet Haywood came up. “Cybil wants to know if you're mad at her,” Harriet said to Simon.

Simon raised his head from the drinking fountain. Before he could answer, Tony asked, “What would he be mad at Ackerman for? What'd she do?”

“You
know,” Harriet said, “for taking his part in the play, for getting to be Ms. Indigestion.”

“Oh, that.” Tony was plainly disappointed.

“Well, is he mad?”

Simon stood to the side, hand still on the water fountain, watching Harriet and Tony Angotti. He felt like a patient being discussed by a doctor and nurse.

“Well, sure he's mad, Haywood,” Tony decided. “What d'you think? You think anybody in his right mind wants to be a macaroni pie?”

“Ajar of peanut butter,” Simon corrected.

“Whatever.” Tony warmed to the discussion. “Listen, Haywood, you go back and tell Cybil Ackerman Simon is mad. Tell her he's plenty mad.”

“Well, I'll tell her what you said—” Harriet began slowly, but Tony cut her off.

“You tell Cybil Ackerman he is so mad he said she ought to be a double Popsicle in the play with them legs of hers.”

Harriet gasped.

“Wait a minute. I didn't say that.”

“Listen, this is between me and Haywood.” Tony had recently learned the pleasure of quarreling with girls, and he didn't want to be interrupted.

“I will tell Cybil
exactly
what he said.” Harriet's eyes had become smaller. “And don't think I won't, either.”

She turned so fast it was like a move out of a pro basketball game. She started down the hall. She was so upset over this insult to her best friend's legs that her whole body was trembling.

“And you know what he said about you?” Tony called after her.

She slowed but did not glance around.

“He said it's too bad there isn't a tub of blubber in the play because that part would be perfect for you!”

Simon watched Harriet draw in a breath so deep he thought she was going to inflate herself. “Wait a minute, Harriet,” he called. Tony was laughing so hard he had to put one hand on Simon's back to steady himself.

Harriet went directly to the girls' restroom. She pushed the door open with such force that it swung back and forth five times—a school record.

Tony slapped Simon on the back. “I love it,” he said. “Old Popsicle legs and tub of blubber.” Again he leaned on Simon's back for support.

Simon shrugged him off. The weight of his friend on his back seemed, unexpectedly, enough to send him to his knees in the hall. “Get off!”

Tony raised his hands. “I'm—Oh, here she comes, pal, and she has not forgotten and forgiven.”

Harriet came out of the restroom like a missile. There were two girls with her, and the three of them, in tight formation, seemed like an attack force out of
Star Wars.

Simon and Tony stepped back against the wall to avoid injury. Tony was silenced for a moment, and then he stepped back into the middle of the hall, as they passed, and watched them.

“Hey, Haywood,” he called. “You know what Simon just said? He said them girls with you ought to be sacks of potatoes in the play.”

The sacks of potatoes stiffened, ruining the tight formation.

“Wait a minute,” Simon said. “I didn't say any of that.”

Tony grinned with satisfaction as the girls attempted to go through the school door at the same time. “You can't get three hamburgers in one bun,” he called cheerfully. Harriet turned. Her eyes were so slitted with anger that they were invisible.

“Now, I did not say
that,
Harriet,” Simon called. “I couldn't have. I—”

“He's just being modest. He thinks of these things and then don't want credit. You be sure to tell Ackerman what he said about them legs.”

“I will,” Harriet called back. She slammed the door and went down the steps.

“She'll tell, too,” Tony said happily. “She loves to blab. Remember that time I put the wastebasket upside down on Miss Ellis's desk, and Miss Ellis came in, and before she even noticed the wastebasket, Harriet jumped up and said, Tony Angotti did it! Tony Angotti did it!'” He jumped up and down to demonstrate. Then he said, “Course I don't have the flab she's got. When Haywood jumps up and down, windows all over the school slam shut.”

“Why do you—” Simon began, but Tony interrupted.

“And then came victory. Miss Ellis said, ‘What did Tony do?' And then she notices that there is a wastebasket upside down on her desk, oh, horrors! And before anyone can stop her, she picks up the wastebasket and trash falls all over her desk!”

In the silence that followed Tony's laughter, Simon asked his question again. “Why do you do stuff like that?”

“Like what?”

“Oh,” he said, shrugging. “Everybody in my family lies. You know that.”

“Well, quit lying about me!”

“Even my mom lies. The first thing she ever said to me that I can remember was a lie. She told me chocolate-covered cherries were medicine.”

“That's different, Tony. That's—”

“My mom would make a real bad face every time she ate one. It took me three, four years before I'd even try a chocolate-covered cherry. She also told me that if I made ugly faces my face would freeze like that and that if I sat too close to the TV I wouldn't be able to see anything but black and white.”

Tony Angotti went on, happily listing his mother's lies. Simon walked beside him in silence. His long friendship with Tony, which had brought him such pleasure in the early grades, seemed this year to be bringing him only discomfort. He walked more slowly. He had the uneasy feeling that he had been led, half-willingly, like a blinded horse, into a stream and abandoned. And now, blindfold lifted, he had to face the current alone.

“And my grandmother—talk about lies! My grandmother told me that if I wore my cousin Bennie's shoes—which were two sizes too little—see, we were out in Wheeling and my uncle died and we all had to go to the funeral and I didn't have any dark shoes. So she told me that if I wore my cousin Bennie's shoes, something nice would happen because they were magic shoes. Can you believe that! And I put them on—can you believe
that?
And off I go to the funeral in my magic shoes—I could barely walk.” He began to limp comically. “The toes were pointy, Simon—they were like real little old men's shoes!”

Simon smiled despite himself.

“And when I got home, I had blisters, them things were that big, and my grandmother—you know what she told me? She told me they were magic blisters and that if I didn't pop them they would turn into silver dollars!”

“Did you pop them?” Simon asked.

“No!—well, yes, but only after Annette laughed at me. Anyway,
that
was lying.” Pride in the family trait showed in his face and voice. “I could never think of anything that good.”

Simon glanced at him and then back at his own feet, dragging along in his torn sneakers. His smile faded. “Yes, but you're just getting started,” he predicted in a low voice.

“That's true.” Tony nodded. “That is sooooo true.”

S
imon entered the house and sighed with relief at being rid of Tony. Then he picked up the mail.

When there was a letter from his father—and there had been only four—he felt worse. In the first two letters his father was living on a boat off the coast of California; in the next two in a forest in Oregon. The letters were Robinson Crusoe descriptions of what he was eating and how he gathered wood and built fires and mended his clothes.