Underdog (7 page)

“It’s hard to say. I never count.”

The cat continued rubbing herself against me. I didn’t mind even though I like dogs better.

“I need that number, Mrs. Firestone,” I tried again.

“What number, Izzy?”

“Gus’s number. The one the S.P.C.A. gave you.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“It was on a paper, Mrs. Firestone. Maybe you put it in your desk or maybe in one of those boxes or maybe in a drawer?”

Mrs. Firestone slowly began looking around the room. Norma stopped rubbing against me and settled down in her lap. Then her brother, Clark, jumped up on the couch and plopped down in her lap too. She began stroking his head and his eyes opened and closed as her wrinkled old hand moved back and forth. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I burn papers. Especially ones with numbers on them.”

Rudolph raised his head from my knees and moved over to Mrs. Firestone. He laid his head on her lap, right next to Norma’s face and the two animals looked sleepily into each other’s eyes. The room was quiet but my despair pounded so noisily inside my chest that I could not keep it there. “I’ll never find Gus now,” I cried.

“Why not?” Mrs. Firestone asked in her dry old voice.

“Because the S.P.C.A. can’t find out where he is unless they have his number. I’ll never know who they gave him to.”

“But I know who they gave him to,” said Mrs. Firestone. “Why didn’t you ask?”

Chapter 7

My father used to say if you want the right answers, you have to know how to ask the right questions. Looking back, I realized that I had not asked the right question which was “Where is Gus now?”

“They came and took him away, poor little thing,” said Mrs. Firestone. “I think I cried the whole day. You know, Izzy,” she said, putting her pale old face up close to mine. There were white wispy hairs on her chin and I tried not to look at them. “Sometimes they kill them
—the S.P.C.A. does. I never like to give an animal away but he wasn’t happy here.”

“Where is he now, Mrs. Firestone?”

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Firestone continued gloomily, ignoring my question, “they say they put them to sleep but I know they kill them. So I felt bad all day. But then, later, when I was shopping, the grocery man, Mr. Holland, was telling a customer that his dog had died. I never liked his dog. He always used to bark at me and once he chased my Rudolph down the street. The dog was a lot like Mr. Holland. But, of course, I was sorry he had passed on and I extended my sympathies to Mr. Holland. I also told him about Gus and do you know what happened?”

“He went to the S.P.C.A. and took Gus?”

“No, he wasn’t interested but his customer was
—a young woman with a little boy. She said she was looking for a dog. I told her Loretta had scared him and what a sweet, gentle dog he was. She said she wanted a gentle dog to play with her little boy and I said that Gus would be the perfect one. So she went and got him.”

“Are you sure, Mrs. Firestone? Are you sure she went and got him?”

“Oh yes, because a couple of times I saw her in the store with him and once Mr. Holland told me that he had
—you know what—all over the cans of tomatoes. So he asked her to keep him tied up outside.”

Mrs
.
Firestone went on talking about other things but I was thinking about Gus. No girl like me for his owner but a boy. I preferred a boy. I wasn’t going to be jealous of a boy.

“What kind of a boy was he?” I asked Mrs. Firestone.

“Who?”

“The boy who was with the lady who went and got Gus.”

“Oh, that boy!”

“Was he a nice boy?”

“Well, Izzy,” said Mrs. Firestone, “in general, I don’t have a very high opinion of boys. Girls laugh at you and call you names but boys throw things.” She lowered her voice. “You see my goose, Franklin
—the one with the spotted neck? He’s named for my favorite president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. I found him in the park. Ah, those were the days!” Mrs. Firestone had a faraway look in her eyes. “When I was younger, I used to take my baby carriage and go to the park and oh, the things I found! Watches and hats and umbrellas, toys and blankets and bottles of wine. Ah, those were the days!”

“You were telling me about the boy, Mrs. Firestone, the one who has Gus.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Firestone, “so on that day, I saw them, three of them, three boys, throwing stones at Franklin here. They were running after him on the grass and he was hurt. So I hit one of them with my umbrella and I kicked another one and they ran away.” She laughed a dry, high little laugh and her false teeth jiggled around in her mouth. “They called me names and threw stones at me but I’m used to that. Franklin was hurt. He had a cut on his back so I took him home with me in the baby carriage. I fixed him up but I could see he wasn’t happy. So another day, I went back and took Eleanor home for him. Now he’s happy.”

“But that boy, Mrs. Firestone, the one with the lady. Did he look like a nice boy?”

Mrs. Firestone shrugged her shoulders. “He looked like a boy, a little boy.”

“Did Gus seem happy?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “He used to come right up to me whenever he saw me at the grocery store and he would wag his tail. Yes, I think he looked very happy.”

“Do you know the lady’s name?”

Mrs. Firestone shook her head. “No, and as a matter of fact I haven’t seen her for a while. But Mr. Holland will know who she is. He didn’t like the way the little dog used to
—you know what—on his tomatoes.”

Mrs. Firestone didn’t want me to leave. She offered to show me a whole bunch of umbrellas she had found in the park. She said I could look them all over and even take one if I liked.

But she understood that I had to go. If anybody understood how much you could love an animal, it was Mrs. Firestone. She showed me the way to go to Mr. Holland’s grocery store and said I should tell him that none of her animals had liked the last pound of butter he had sold her. “Too salty,” she told me. “Next time, tell him, more butter and less salt.”

The store was empty when I arrived. A large, round, bald man with more chins than I could count slouched over the counter and watched me carefully as I came toward him.

“Uh, Mrs. Firestone sent me over,” I told him.

“Mrs. Firestone,” said the grocer, straightening up and narrowing his eyes at me. “Mrs. Firestone now owes me three hundred dollars and seventy-eight cents. I don’t know what she sent you over here for but maybe you’ll be good enough to take a message back to her from me. The message is
—
no more credit!”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and decided not to deliver Mrs. Firestone’s message to him. “Actually, Mrs. Firestone didn’t send me over here to buy anything. She sent me over here because she said you would be able to answer a question I have.”

“Which is?” he asked, not very pleasantly.

So I went through the whole story about Gus and he shook his head when I finished.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he said. “I’ve been here for over thirty years and I’ve never known what she’s ever been talking about.”

“A lady with a little boy ...”

“Lots of my customers are ladies with little boys.”

“A small black dog ...”

“And lots of them have small black dogs.”

“... named Gus.”

“I don’t listen to their names.”

“Mrs. Firestone said he
—you know what—on your cans of tomatoes.”

“Oh that dog!” said Mr. Holland.

He remembered Gus. “Mrs. Kaplan. That was her name. Her husband was Dr. Kaplan, a young fellow doing an internship in one of the hospitals. Five, six years ago that was, but I remember because she always bought cans of okra. Her little boy was crazy about okra so I had to stock it just for her. You remember things like that when you’re a grocer. I never had a customer before or one after who liked okra.”

“But Mr. Holland, where is she now?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Once he finished interning, they moved and I was stuck with over a dozen cans of okra.”

“Does anybody know where they moved, Mr. Holland?”

“But I don’t hold it against her. She should have let me know in advance but I guess she didn’t think of it. And she did come in to say good-bye. She was a good customer, so some things you just have to overlook.”

“Please, Mr. Holland,” I said, “I need to find them. Isn’t there anybody who can tell me where they went?”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Holland. “Maybe their old landlady, Mrs. Doyle. She rented them the upstairs apartment, She lives downstairs
—148 Oleander—but she’s probably not home now. You have to catch her in the mornings. In the afternoons she goes to baby-sit for her daughter.”

I was aching with impatience but the clock in Mr. Holland’s grocery store said ten to three. It would take me nearly an hour to get home and I didn’t want Gina to grow suspicious. Tomorrow was another day.

We had crepes stuffed with shrimp and mushrooms and a big spinach and mandarin orange salad for dinner. And little chocolate tarts that my aunt pulled out of the freezer. I watched her working in her kitchen. Everything gleamed and nothing made stains or spots or splashes on the floor. Her beige skirt and off-white silk shirt stayed clean under the spotless white apron. She loved to cook, she told me as her long, slim fingers with their perfect nails quickly stirred, chopped, and cut. Often, on a free evening or Sunday, she said, she might cook or bake up a batch of things to freeze,

“Do you like to cook, Izzy,” she asked me.

I hesitated. I thought of Mrs. Evans’s meat loafs and spaghetti sauces and the rows of TV dinners in our freezer. Sandy never cooked much and Karen kept saying she would once she was over being pregnant. Sometimes Mrs. Evans baked
—big, lumpy marble cakes and cookies that were either too hard or too soft.

“Yes,” I said, “yes, I like to cook.”

“Well, maybe you and I can work together tonight if you like. Tomorrow night, I’m expecting some friends over. Some women. We have a women’s reading group and we get together once a month at somebody else’s house. Tomorrow night it’s my turn, so I thought I might bake something tonight. Would you like to help?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I would.”

“Unless,” she said, “you have too much homework. I wouldn’t want to interfere with your homework.”

“Oh no,” I told her. “I did it already.”

They asked me a lot of questions about school at dinner. My aunt really asked me the questions and my uncle pretended to be interested in what I was saying. But I could see his mind was on other things. He was reminding me more and more of my father.

My aunt’s face had such a serious, worried look as she asked her questions that I made a special effort to look bright and happy as I answered.

“What’s your teacher’s name?”

“Uh
—Miss Ballard.”

“Is she nice?”

“Oh yes. She’s very nice. She’s young and very pretty and the kids all seem to really like her.”

“And the other children? The kids? Are they
...
are they nice?”

“Oh, just great! Very nice!”

“Are they
...
are they nice to you? I hope nobody said anything mean or
...
”

“Oh no. They went out of their way to help me. One of the girls showed me around the classroom and stayed with me during the day. And she picked me for her kickball team during PE. A great bunch of kids, Aunt Alice.”

“Because you know, Izzy, if you’re not happy there, I want you to let us know right away.”

“I love it,” I told her, smiling. “It’s the best school I ever went to.”

My uncle did the dishes but you could see he was in a big hurry to go off and look at his papers. Aunt Alice and I stayed in the kitchen and she began pulling out shiny baking pans and measuring spoons and gleaming mixing bowls.

“I thought we’d make a Gateau Genoise for petits fours.”

“Oh sure,” I said.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever made them before,” she said, looking at me with that worried look.

“Well no, not exactly,” I admitted, “but I’m a fast learner.”

Later, she said I was. At first, she made me nervous, the way she worked, so clean and careful. But later, after she had baked a large pan of sweet, lemony-smelling cake and set it down in front of me to cut out shapes with different kinds of cookie cutters, I began to enjoy myself. I cut out squares and circles and diamonds and even some hearts. She gave me jams and creams and chocolate icing and nuts and fruits to fill them with and her face stopped looking so worried.

They were so beautiful later, when she arranged them on a tray, that I couldn’t bear thinking people were going to eat them up the next night,

“How about sampling a couple now?” she suggested before sliding the tray into her immaculate refrigerator.

“Oh no!” I said, and she suddenly burst out laughing when she saw my face.

Uncle Roger came out of his study into the kitchen, sniffing the air. “Fee, fi, fo, fum,” he said.

“Out!” my aunt ordered, giggling. “This is for my women’s group. He’s a compulsive taster,” she told me. “We’ll have to post an armed guard here tonight to keep him out.”

“I always give you some of my french fries,” Uncle Roger told her. “I never refused to share my potatoes with you.”

“I’m afraid, Izzy,” my aunt said, “your uncle has a dreadful secret that you had better be told. He is a nut over french fries.” She shuddered. “Especially late at night. So sometimes if you smell greasy, fattening smells in the wee hours of the morning, you’ll know who’s responsible.”

“I like french fries too,” I said.

“There, you see,” my uncle said to my aunt. “It’s a genetic trait
—runs in the family. We can’t help ourselves. But it could be worse. Some people become werewolves when the moon is full but Izzy and I—we simply take to the kitchen and immerse ourselves in grease.” He looked at the clock. “Hmm—9:30, a little early, perhaps, but what do you say, Izzy?”

“I say no,” my aunt replied. “She has to get up for school early tomorrow, so maybe we had better work out some kind of compromise.” She held out the tray of petits fours. “One,” she offered.