When Ratboy Lived Next Door (15 page)

“That's not funny. What is this, Daddy?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Um, I think I'll stay out of this one, ladies.”

“Stay out of what?”

Mother sat down and flipped her napkin open before she laid it in her lap. “Well, Lydia, we all had jobs we agreed to do when Nanna left, isn't that correct? And yours was to wash the dirty clothes. Since you've chosen not to wash my clothes, and expect me to wear them dirty, I decided I'd return the favor. Why should I cook a new meal for you every day? I'll just let you eat what you left the night before.” She smiled as she picked up her fork. “I guess your little plan saves us both some work, doesn't it?”

My face was hot with embarrassment. But more than that, I was angry.

“You know what? I'll save you even more work.” I got up and threw my plate into the sink. “Don't bother cooking for me at all. The reason I had food left over is because I can't eat what you cook.”

“Lydia!” Daddy said, but I wouldn't look at him.

“Fair enough,” Mother said. “I've never claimed to be a gourmet.”

“Gourmet? You can't boil water!” I shouted at her.

She went on as if I hadn't said a word. “But who gave you the right to decide which of my clothes should get washed, Lydia?”

“There's just so
much
laundry! You don't know how much work it is to wring all those clothes out and then rinse them and wring them out again.”

Too late I remembered that Mother wanted to get rid of Nanna's washer.

“That's a problem you created for yourself, young lady. You can have a new washer any time you ask.”

“You want to make it so Nanna never comes back. You might not care about her, but I miss her! If you think you can step in now and become my mother, you can forget it. I don't know why you didn't just ship me off with Nanna since you didn't want me to begin with.”

Daddy stood up. In a stern voice I hardly recognized, he said, “Go to your room.”

I looked at Daddy, who treated me so special until I was up against Mother. He took her side no matter what. And Mother—well, I didn't know what to make of her at all.

“That's a fine idea,” I said. “There's nobody here I want to spend time with, anyway.”

I flounced out of the kitchen, went to my bedroom, and gave my door the hardest slam I could muster. There's something satisfying about slamming a door when you're mad. It was something Nanna never understood. She'd have followed me upstairs, then made me come out into the hall and close the door quietly. Well, Nanna wasn't here.

The evening dragged on. I kept thinking that Daddy or Mother would eventually knock on my door with a plate of cookies or maybe a sandwich. Nanna would have. But I didn't hear a word from either of them. I was so hungry the front of my stomach felt as if it were touching my backbone. When I heard their footsteps coming to bed, I knew one of them would open the door to make sure I was all right. I was wrong again. After I heard their bedroom door close for the night, I finally gave in to the tears that had been threatening.

I was on the same bed, in the same house that I'd lived in my entire life, but nothing was familiar anymore. I didn't even have my picture of Robert since Mother had found it. I'd been losing people all summer, it seemed.

*   *   *

The next morning I waited until Mother and Daddy had left for work before getting up. I made a piece of toast and took it downstairs with me while I sorted the laundry—
all
the laundry. Then I washed the first load and carried it upstairs to hang outside.

Willis was sitting on the ground, leaning against the base of our oak tree. “You ready to read?”

“How long have you been there?” I asked in a not very friendly tone.

“You said we'd read every day.”

I felt tired already and the day had just begun.

“Yeah, we will. It's just that I have to do my chores first. You know chores? Jobs? Don't you have any?”

“Nah.”

“Well, I do. I have to hang up this laundry. Then I'll have to wash a second load. It's gonna take me a while.”

“Get some help,” he said, as if I were an idiot for not thinking of it.

“It's just me here.”

“If I helped, you'd get done faster and we could read.”

“Well … yeah … that would work.” I wasn't sure I wanted to spend all day with Willis, but it would be nice to have help. “You sure you want to?”

He smiled and said, “Heck no, I don't want to. But I will.”

I laughed at that, then quickly looked to see if he'd taken it wrong. He was smiling.

True to his word, Willis hung up the clothes while I wrung out the second load. The work went faster, and in no time we were ready to read. Then I went to the Frigidaire to get our Kool-Aid and saw a note stuck to the front:

Lydia,

Please come by the newspaper shop when you get your work done.

Mother

She had never asked me to come there before. She always acted as if I were intruding if I so much as walked in. I wadded up the note, threw it into the trash, and carried the Kool-Aid out to Willis.

I wasn't going. She could come to me. Still, the whole time I was reading about the gestation period of raccoons, I wondered what Mother wanted. I was glad when our time was up and Willis left.

I ran into the bathroom and combed my hair. I looked in the mirror and said to my reflection, “You're pitiful.” I hated myself for going.

I walked into the newspaper shop to a loud
ooga! ooga!
The horn sounded over the noise of the machinery to let Mother know when customers came in. I stood there, breathing in the sharp smell while I waited for her to look up from her Linotype machine.

It was a big machine that had a sort of typewriter attached, and the letters were all scrambled up but in a different order than on a typewriter. The machine had a small pot of melted metal, and when Mother hit enough keys to fill up a line of type she would send the line through the machine. The melted metal would be molded into a line of type. That's how it got its name, Linotype. Then she'd type the next line and it would follow.

I knew all that because our second-grade class had taken a field trip here. Mother had typed every student's name and they'd gotten to take the molded letters home. I still remember our teacher, Mrs. Howard, saying, “Lydia, we won't do yours. You probably have tons of these at home.”

I'd just smiled a stupid smile while my heart sank. I would have given my eyeteeth to have one of those little metal names made by Mother. I wished I could go back to that moment and say, “No, Mrs. Howard. My mother never cared enough about me to let me come watch her work or type my name for me.”

“Hello, Lydia.” Mother brought me back to the present.

“Hi,” I said.

She wiped her hands on a rag and said, “I'm so glad you came by. I was thinking about our conversation last night and, well”—she gave a little laugh—“cooking is proving more difficult than I thought.”

I didn't say anything.

“But then you already know that,” she said wryly. “Anyway, I may as well be honest here. I've never had to cook before. You see, Philip … my first husband … You, of course, know about him.”

I stayed silent.

“Well, he was a fantastic cook. He owned a restaurant and brought dinner home every night. Wasn't I smart to marry someone like him?” She smiled, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. “When your father and I married, we ate at the Oasis most nights. Then Nanna came and took over. I actually looked forward to being the cook for the first time in my life, but everything takes so long! Why, half the time I forget to thaw the meat and by the time I get anything on the table it's late.”

She pulled her chair around from the Linotype to face me and sat down. “So! I wondered if you had any suggestions.”

“You mean you want me to cook?”

“Oh, no. You have enough to do.”

Well, at least she noticed that!

“Lydia, would you be terribly disappointed if we had, say, lunch-meat sandwiches some nights? Oh, I know it's not what Nanna would fix but—”

“Nah, I wouldn't mind.” Nanna never let me eat it, but I had baloney with cheese and ketchup with Rae Anne at Mrs. Ogle's house.

“Good! And I was thinking that maybe we could eat at the Oasis some nights.”

“That's fine. The Oasis would be fine.” It was my favorite place to eat, but I didn't want to act too eager.

“Well…” she said.

I also didn't want to be dismissed by some sort of queen who ordered her subjects to come forward, then shooed them off, so I said, “I have to go now.”

“Lydia?”

I turned back, careful not to be hopeful. She just wanted to ask me something else. Maybe she wanted me to go buy the lunch meat for supper. She didn't want
me,
I reminded myself.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“I thought maybe you might stay and have a snack with me. Oh, don't worry—I didn't cook one! I thought you might run over to the restaurant and get us a piece of pie.”

I steeled myself. “No, I have to go now.”

“Oh, well, some other time, then.”

I opened the door and heard the horn blast. I thought it was saying, “Fo-ol! Fo-ol!” I wanted so much to stay. But I had to stop expecting her to be a mother to me. I had to close my heart to that, because it wasn't ever going to happen. Staying with her now would only hurt more in the long run.

*   *   *

Mother and I went back to the way we were before our fight. Not friends but not enemies, either. Dinnertime got a whole lot better. She began looking on the backs of canned goods for easy recipes. She found a tuna noodle casserole that wasn't bad. We also had baloney-and-cheese sandwiches—twice!

We had our best meals at the Oasis. I'd order a burger and fries, while Mother and Daddy ate something that I hated such as soup beans and corn bread. The best part of eating at the Oasis was seeing Elliot. He worked hard as a busboy, cleaning off tables, mopping up spills, and washing dishes. There he was, right out in the open, where I could watch him as much as I wanted. Even if we didn't exactly carry on a conversation, it made me feel better.

On Saturday night, while Daddy was paying the bill and Mother was in the ladies' room, Elliot came over to clean our table. He said, “Hey, Lydia.” Just like old times.

“Hey, yourself.”

He dropped a fork on the floor, I thought on purpose. When he leaned down to pick it up, he whispered in my ear. I leaned into him to hear what he was saying. He smelled like soap and his breath tickled my ear as he whispered. I straightened up and took a big gulp of air to clear my head.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if you got one of Big Joe's special burgers with cigarette ashes on top.”

“I must have. It was mighty tasty.” I managed to get it out in a normal voice.

“I'll tell him how much you liked it.”

We both laughed. It felt good to laugh with him again.

He got serious. “Willis told me how you've been reading to him. Thanks.”

Before I could answer, Daddy came up and slapped Elliot on the back. “Hey, neighbor. How're things at the Merrills'?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Good, good. Well, Ladybug, we need to scoot.”

Mother returned at that moment and said hello to Elliot. I slowly stood. I wasn't ready to leave him or that warm feeling, but Daddy put one arm around me, the other around Mother, and walked us to the door.

I turned back and peeked over the top of Daddy's arm to get one more look at Elliot. He was looking right at me, making a funny face and silently mouthing, “Ladybug?”

I laughed out loud, feeling better than I had since forever.

14

“You remember the rules, right?”

“Yeah,” Willis said as he eyed the front of the library. He seemed awfully nervous. Well, the library always made me nervous, too.

I pulled open the heavy door. Cool air and the musty smell of old books blew into our faces. Willis looked at me and chuckled with excitement. I smiled, not because the library had
that
effect on me, but because I'd never seen him look really happy before.

We'd finally finished the raccoon book and Willis had told me he'd always wanted to hear the story of Tom Sawyer. I promised to check it out, but he insisted on coming, too. I wasn't at all anxious to have him and Mrs. Green in the same room, what with her thinking he was my boyfriend, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Inside the library, though, he got a wary look on his face. I looked over at the tall front desk with George Washington's picture hanging behind it. There was an American flag just off to the side. I guess it did look a little imposing. But, boy, if he was overwhelmed now, he should have been here before Mrs. Green ran the show.

I found
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
soon enough. Willis reached for a book, then lowered his hand quickly. He looked around as if worried that he'd get into trouble.

“It's okay,” I whispered. “Pick one and take a look at it.”

He pulled a book off the shelf and reverently opened it. Then he looked at me with disgust on his face. “There ain't no pictures in here!”

“Well, no. Books for our age don't usually have pictures. We can get other books, though.”

I took him to the little kids' section. He flipped through a couple of books and I think he would have liked them, but pride kept him from admitting it.

“These are for babies!”

“Yeah, they're for younger kids. But some of them are pretty good. I wouldn't mind checking out one for myself.”

Willis snorted as if to say I was the biggest liar on the planet.

“Okay, if you don't want any of these, how about one like the book we had on raccoons? They've got photos in them.”