He sat there in his green corduroy jacket and his green hat with earflaps on, and a plastic bag of bread scraps in his lap.
Sweet-Ho drove real careful down to the road beside the river, and she let Gunther beep the car horn now and then, leaning over from his car seat. Gunther took that responsibility real serious, and only beeped when Sweet-Ho told him he could.
"Daddy lets me sit on his lap and steer," he said, looking over at Sweet-Ho so's she would know it was a question he was asking, though he didn't come right out and ask if he could do it with her.
"Daddy's tall," I explained to him from the back seat, "so it boosts you up when you sit on his lap. But Sweet-Ho's not tall enough for that."
"Oh," Gunther said, nodding his head.
We drove along the river road for some miles and saw plenty of crows and stuff in the trees, but the river was empty and gray. No ducks.
Gunther kept peering out, hiccuping now and then, watching for the ducks and clutching his bundle of bread scraps tight. I felt sorry for his disappointment.
"We should've come last week," I grumbled.
Gunther wiggled around in his seat so's he could look back at me. "They're coming back," he said.
"It sure don't look like it to me, Gun," I told him, trying to let him down easy.
"I don't mean now. But sometime. Like people. People go away, and then they come back. Ducks do, too. They always come back. You have to save up your bread and be ready."
"It's getting too cold, I guess," Sweet-Ho said. "All the ducks went someplace warmer. I expect they're all at Disney World for a vacation." Gunther giggled. He knew she was just joking.
"At Disney World a big Mickey Mouse comes out and shakes your hand," Gunther said. "I saw it on TV. I wouldn't be scared if I went there, would you?"
"Nope," Sweet-Ho said.
"Me neither," I said. "I'd just say, 'How do you do, Mickey?'"
"Do you think we can go there sometime?" Gunther asked.
"Well," Sweet-Ho told him, "we'll have to ask your daddy. Maybe someday we can."
Just when the river started to get boring, since the ducks was all gone, Sweet-Ho told Gunther he could beep once more, and she turned onto another road and we ended up at Fowler's Corners. It's not really a town, just a few houses and a gas station and a little diner. She pulled into the parking lot in front of the diner and said we could go in and get something warm to drink.
"I only want milk," Gunther said.
So when we got settled in a booth and got Gunther's hat off, Sweet-Ho ordered coffee for herself, hot chocolate for me, and a glass of milk for Gunther. It was a pretty nice diner, with shiny Formica tops on the counter and the tables, and on the wall hung a calendar with a real colorful picture of two puppies in a basket. Somebody had written "Debbie loves Brendon forever" with ballpoint pen on the wall beside my seat. On the table there was a sugar jar with one of them tin tops shaped like a volcano.
While the waitress was off getting our order, Gunther announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Sweet-Ho took him, and while she was gone I polished the top of the sugar jar with my fingertip. I could see my face in it, all flattened out and looking something like a prehistoric caveperson. I wished Veronica was there so's she could be a caveperson, too.
The waitress came back while Sweet-Ho and Gunther was gone, and put our things on the table.
"Does your mother take cream?" she asked, and I told her yes, please.
"You look like your mother," the waitress said, as she set down two little paper cups of cream. "Except for your hair color. That sure is pretty hair."
"Thank you. Ginger-colored, it's called," I told her.
"I know a family that has five kids, and every single one of them has bright red hair. But your brother didn't get it, that ginger-color, though, did he?"
"No, he just has that old brown."
"Well, for a boy it don't matter now, does it?" the waitress said, and laid out three paper napkins.
I shook my head. In the back of the diner, I could see the bathroom door open. Sweet-Ho came out, leaning over to zip Gunther's green jacket.
"My brother and sister both got brown hair," I said. Then I added, real quick, "My sister and my daddy are off on a different outing today."
"That's nice," the waitress said, and then she moved away, smiling at Gunther while Sweet-Ho lifted him back up on the seat of the booth.
"You all have a nice day," the waitress called when we left.
Gunther fell asleep in his car seat while we was driving home, so we didn't have any more horn-beeping. I got sleepy, too, in the backseat, and I closed my eyes and thought about the lie I told the waitress: the lie that Veronica was my sister. If only it was true. I wasn't mad at Veronica anymore, and I wanted my lie to be true.
When we got home, Sweet-Ho carried Gunther into the house and laid him down on the couch. Then she set about making supper, and it was already commencing to get dark outside when Mr. Bigelow and Veronica got back.
Veronica ran upstairs to change her clothes—her daddy made her wear a dress to the hospital—and I followed her and went into her room. "I brought you this," I said. "Me and Gunther and Sweet-Ho went for an outing and we stopped at a diner." I gave her two little toothpicks with fringed paper on their ends which I took from a box beside the cash register at the diner.
"Thanks." She took them and stuck them into a corner of her mirror frame, next to one of the Halloween snapshots. "I thought you were mad at me."
"Not anymore."
She zipped up her jeans and started looking around for a shirt. "I couldn't bring you anything because we didn't stop anyplace."
"Not even for a Pepsi or nothing?"
Veronica pulled a sweatshirt over her head and then grabbed her ponytail through. "There was this lounge at the hospital and we had a drink there, from a machine. I had to have grape because it was all out of everything else."
"Is that all you did, just sat and had grape?" I felt funny asking about her visit to the hospital.
"We walked around some, outside. They have benches and stuff. We sat on a bench and talked."
"What did you talk about?" I couldn't remember Mrs. Bigelow talking much, ever. Just smiling.
"The weather. And Daddy told her about Gunther wearing my ballerina costume. He made it into a funny story. We didn't tell her about Millie Bellows getting hit by the stone, of course. Just about Gunther dancing."
"Did she laugh?"
Veronica shook her head. She sat down on the bed to tie her sneakers. "No. She just kept watching while we talked. She didn't say much, just nodded her head. And her hair looked horrible, like she doesn't comb it."
"After you walked around, then you just got back in the car to come home?"
"No, then she—my mother—went back to where she stays. A nurse took her. And Daddy went off in a room to talk to the doctors. I had to wait in the lounge. I read a bunch of old Good Housekeepings"
"What did the doctors say? Did he tell you?"
"Just that she has a lot of medication, and it makes her walk slow and not talk much. And they said she's getting better."
It didn't sound better to me, not combing her hair and not talking. Before, she always kept her hair nice, at least. But I didn't say that to Veronica. "Was it fun, going there?" I asked her.
"No. I hated it."
"I wish you could've gone with us. We looked for ducks on the river, and Sweet-Ho let Gunther beep the car horn."
Mr. Bigelow called from the foot of the stairs. "Girls! Time to set the table!"
"Thanks for the toothpicks," Veronica said as we headed down the hall.
"I told the waitress they was for my sister," I said, and Veronica grinned.
12
Mr. Bigelow gave Gunther his bath while me and Veronica helped Sweet-Ho with the dishes. Then he brought him downstairs in his pj's, with his hair all slicked down and ointment rubbed on his eczema.
Gunther climbed onto the couch with an armload of books, to
get his bedtime story.
"Daddy," he asked, "will you take us to Disney World? A big Mickey Mouse comes out and shakes your hand. Sweet-Ho told me to ask if you would take us."
Sweet-Ho came out of the kitchen, laughing and wiping her hands on a towel. "Hold it, Gunther," she said. "Phil, I just told him he'd have to ask his daddy, that's all."
Mr. Bigelow scooped Gunther up onto his lap and turned on the lamp beside the couch. "Tell you what, Big Gun. If I ever sell the Rockwell house, I'll take all of us to Disney World for a whole week. How's that?"
"Okay," Gunther said, and reached for a book.
I looked over at Veronica. Me and Veronica had a secret about the Rockwell house. It was an enormous house set up high on a hill on the side of town, and it had towers and porches sticking out every which way. Nobody had lived in it for as long as I could remember. It looked even more neglected than Millie Bellows's little house, but you could picture how, with new paint and the windows fixed, and all them acres of lawn mowed, it would be like a mansion. Veronica and me planned to buy it when we grew up. We was going to live there together and take in all the orphans we could find. If we had children of our own, of course they would live there, too. In all of them bedrooms there was going to be zillions of cribs and little beds, and we would have one big room full of nothing but toys, and outside there would be swings and seesaws and such.
We would have to hire people to help look after them, of course, but we already figured out how we was going to find them in special places, not just advertising in the dumb old Highriver newspaper where people advertise for clerks and computer technicians. We plotted this out real careful. We was planning to find out where they make those greeting cards, those kind that say, "To a Special Little Boy Who's 2 Today." Hallmark and like that. Then we would go there, to that card factory, and maybe stand out by the gate, like politicians shaking hands at a factory gate, and we'd hand out leaflets. That way all the people who write them cards? Like the lady who wrote this one, which came to Gunther from his grandma in Tennessee on Easter:
Here's a bunny who hopped your way
And a froggie, come to play
With a special boy so far away
On this Happy Easter Day!
Veronica and me, we figured out that all them ladies in card factories would be the ones we want to work in our orphans home. So we'd offer to pay them more, and give them lots of benefits and such. But the real benefit would be that instead of making up those little poems and thinking about little children far away, they could be right there with the little children, caring for them and hugging them all the time.
And here's the real clever thing that Veronica thought up. You know how most ads say "Experience essential"? Or "Minimum two years experience"? Well, our leaflet would say:
Experience not required.
Only LOVE desired.
It was Veronica's idea to make it in rhyme so's it would stand out on the page.
That was our dream, Veronica's and mine, to fill that house up with little orphans and with Hallmark ladies. Her and me would live there too. Sweet-Ho, if she wanted. And Gunther could.
It wouldn't be the Rockwell house anymore after that. Down at the end of the driveway, there would be a sign, not neon or nothing, but one of them white signs with black letters like you see at the gate to a horse farm. And it would say: THE VERONICA PARABLE HOME.
I thought about that while Mr. Bigelow read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to Gunther. I expect Veronica was thinking about it, too.
When Sweet-Ho was upstairs putting Gunther to bed, Mr. Bigelow gave a big stretch of his arms and said, "I'm bushed."
"Tired," Veronica said.
"Exhausted," I said.
"Fatigued," Mr. Bigelow said.
"Pooped," Veronica said.
"Wait a minute," I said, and I ran up the stairs to my room to get the thesaurus. "Weary!" Mr. Bigelow called up the stairs after me.
After I looked it up in the thesaurus, I added, "Prostrate." Then I gave the book to Veronica, and she said, "Spent."
By the time Sweet-Ho had come back down, we had made up the rules of a game. One person chose a word and got to hold the thesaurus. Then the rest of us thought up other words for it in turn, and the one who got the most—they had to be listed in the thesaurus—was the winner of that round.
Veronica took the book and announced: "Untruth!"
I got to go first and I said, "Lie." That was easy. So I got a point.
Then Mr. Bigelow said, "Fib," and got a point.
Sweet-Ho said, "Falsehood," so we were even, one point for each, and it was my turn again.
Shoot, I couldn't think of nothing. Finally I had to pass.
Mr. Bigelow was stuck for a minute, too, but finally he said, "Invention? I seem to remember I had a teacher in school who used to say, 'That's quite an invention' if somebody told a lie."
Veronica moved her finger along the page of words, and found it. "Invention. Two points for you, Daddy. Your turn, Sweet-Ho."
"Fabrication," Sweet-Ho said, quick as anything. Two points for her. And I had to pass again.
Then Mr. Bigelow passed.
"You and Daddy are tied, Sweet-Ho," Veronica said.
Sweet-Ho grinned. "Misrepresentation," she said, and won that round.
Mr. Bigelow took the thesaurus and searched for a word while Sweet-Ho went out to the kitchen and got a pitcher of lemonade and four glasses on a tray. When she got back, we played again. Mr. Bigelow's word was "white"—and shoot, Sweet-Ho won again. Me and Veronica got things like "ivory" and "creamy," but Sweet-Ho, she kept going and said words I never heard of, like "alabaster," and before we knew it, she won again.
And the next time, and the next. Sweet-Ho won every single time, even beating out Mr. Bigelow on business-type words. She was kind of embarrassed, winning every round, but you could tell she was pleased, too.
We all looked at her, amazed, after we quit the game and put the book down on the table. "I read a lot," she said, explaining why she won.
"Have you ever thought about going to college, Sweet-Ho?" Mr. Bigelow asked.
She busted out laughing. "I never went past eighth grade," she said. "One thing I always wished was that I finished school. Don't you ever even consider quitting school, Rabble, or I swear I'll take a stick to your backside." She was joking about the stick, I knew. But she spoke real fierce.
"Wait a minute," Mr. Bigelow said, serious-like. "You could, Sweet-Ho. The community college gives extension courses in the evenings. I don't think you have to have a high school diploma. If you did, it would be easy enough for you to take the equivalency test."
But Sweet-Ho just kept laughing, all embarrassed. "I get all nervous even thinking about a test," she said. "You know I was shaking when I took my driver's test?"
Me and Veronica took the tray of glasses and the pitcher out to the kitchen. It was bedtime. Sweet-Ho and Mr. Bigelow said good night, and we went upstairs. From the bedroom, while I put on my nightgown, I could hear them talking. I could hear that Sweet-Ho was still laughing and protesting, and that Mr. Bigelow, in his deep, quiet voice, was explaining about the college courses and reassuring her.
Later, when she came up, I was still awake. While she brushed her hair in the darkness, with only a little light coming in from the hall through the partly open door, I watched her from my bed.
"Phil says that they have all these courses in literature," she said to me. "Like poetry and novels and drama. You remember, Rabble, when we went to see that play where the little girl and her friend hung out in the kitchen all the time, with the cook? Remember that? And she had her hair all chopped off like a boy? Wasn't that something? What was it called?"
Member of the Wedding, I told her.
She nodded her head and brushed her hair some more, looking at herself in the mirror in the dim light. "That's right. Member of the Wedding. I thought about that play for the longest time afterward. Just to see them moving about and speaking, on the stag
e, as if they were in real life. Wasn't that something, though?"
"Mmmmmm."
"I surely would love to learn about those things," Sweet-Ho said softly, almost to herself. "But I know I'd be too scared."
"Only at first," I told her. "At first you'd be scared, but then after a while, it'd be okay. After you got used to it."
She sighed and went to the dresser for her nightgown. "It takes me so long to get used to things, Rabble," she said.
***
Mr. Bigelow, once he got an idea, never let go of it, not if it was a good idea. For example, once, a couple of years ago, he started getting after Veronica for biting her fingernails. First he just lectured her a bit, saying as how it made her hands look ugly, which was true, but that didn't seem to work on her, because she had the habit already and couldn't break herself of it, even though she wanted pretty hands. Most people would just give up after that. But Mr. Bigelow, he went down to Woolworth and came back with a little bag filled with fingernail stuff. I was some astounded that a man would go right in there to the cosmetics counter and buy that stuff, but he wasn't even embarrassed or nothing. He laid it all out on the kitchen table for Veronica: nail files and little brushes and tools for keeping your hands nice, and the best part was three bottles of polish—one pink, and one bright red, and one real special, glittery silver.
And he told her she could use the polish, even could wear it to school, once she got her hands looking nice. She could even wear the silver to school if she wanted, he said, though she may not want to look that fancied-up in fourth grade.
And it worked. After that, if she started in to bite her nails, she had only to be reminded in a nice way of all those fancy polishes, waiting for proper hands to put them on. By the time a couple of months had passed, she had normal-looking fingernails, and her daddy made a big celebration of it, and he even helped her paint them pink.
After a little while she didn't wear the polish to school no more, just kept it in her room to fool with on weekends. But her nails stayed nice.