The phone rang during dinner, and I answered it because everyone else was doing something—even Grandpa was in the kitchen getting more bread—and it was Abby, saying that Blue was fine, but coming to their place for some turnout. I wondered how to ask my question. Finally, I said, “How is Ned?”
And she said, “He’s happier. He has a new friend.”
I said, “What is his name?”
She said, “Ben.”
I dropped the phone, but I picked it up again. I didn’t know what to think, so I decided not to think anything, and said, “That’s neat. Okay, see you Saturday.”
Joan Ariel wasn’t old enough to sit in the high chair, or even eat anything, but Mom had a little bassinet by her own chair. She could rock it back and forth with one hand while eating her pecan tart—Grandma makes these. They are like tiny pecan pies, and everyone loves them. Mostly, everyone talked about Joan Ariel—what she did all day (sleep, eat, get her diaper changed, cry a little, get carried outside when the sun was out). Mom asked me how school was, but she yawned when I was telling her, and then smiled and said, “Wonderful, honey,” which always means that she isn’t listening. I picked out the pecans one by one and ate them, then scraped out the sweet filling with my spoon, then picked up the crust with my fingers and ate it like a cracker. No one said a word. Then I got up and took my plate into the kitchen without asking to be excused from the table, and no one said a word then, either. They were still talking about Joan Ariel. I looked at her. It was hard to tell if she was awake or asleep, but she wasn’t meeping or cheeping.
Now that I was no longer an only child, it was easy to see that there had been two sides to being an only child, because no adult around you has anything better to do than to watch what you are doing. This can be good or bad. If they are in a good mood, then everything you do, you feel like you are on television or something, and you are always getting a laugh or some applause. If the adult is in a bad mood, though, an only child feels like she is being followed around by a big dark cloud, and every so often lightning is going to strike—“Where is your jacket? What time do you think it is? Do not talk to me in that tone of voice!” The good moods and the bad moods do not have a regular rhythm—they come and go. I guess I just learned to put up with it.
Now that Joan Ariel was here, it looked like I could do just about whatever I wanted. When I walked into the living room and stared for a minute at the TV, and then looked out the window at the empty street and the Clarks’ house on the other side, I had to wonder what I wanted to do. For the moment, I couldn’t think of anything. So I got Misty of Chincoteague out of my bag and sat down on the couch. That was another problem—I had been so good at school all day that my work was done, and I didn’t even have anything to read, since Miss Cranfield hadn’t handed out Johnny Tremain yet and I had read all of my own books. There’s another book that I would like to read, Black Gold, which I have seen in the library but never checked out. It is about a racehorse from Oklahoma (so there, Mr. Lovitt). Anyway, while I was sitting there, I heard Mrs. Murphy ring her bell, and I thought maybe I should make better friends with Jimmy Murphy, because he seemed always to have something to do. I for sure did not want to end up like Kathleen Kernan. Now here came my name from the dining room—“Ellen!”—and then Mom appeared in the doorway, with Joan Ariel in her arms, and she said, “Oh, honey! Could you please help Grandma with the dishes? Grandpa wants to get home in time for Red Skelton on TV.” She spoke in a very soft voice, and I saw that Joan Ariel was asleep. After I passed her to go into the kitchen, she went very quietly through the living room and up the stairs.
Grandpa was sitting at the kitchen table. The window beside him was open and he was smoking his cigarette. I took a clean dish towel out of the drawer and started wiping the plates and stacking them on the table, since I couldn’t reach high enough to put them away. Grandma said, “Thanks, sweetie,” but they didn’t say anything else. Once all the china was done, she said she would leave the pots and pans in the rack. Then she drained the sink, folded the dishcloth, and put the china away. She closed all the cabinets. Grandpa looked at his watch. He seemed impatient to get going. They gave me little kisses, and went out the back door. A minute later, I could hear the car start up and drive off, and then everything was quiet. I knew without anyone telling me that it had to be quiet, just so that Joan Ariel would stay asleep. I stood there for a little while, thinking about Ned, and then I went out the back door and around to the side. I looked up at Mom’s window. It was dark. The whole house was dark except for the kitchen. You could hear the wind fluffing up the trees and pushing its way around the corners of the house, and I really do think that you could hear the ocean, too, five blocks down, tapping the shore, billowing, and sliding out again. It was full nighttime. The moon was already up—just a rounded sliver in the dark sky above the ocean. I decided to go for a walk—a really long walk.
Even the Murphy boys have to be in by dark, and they do come in by dark. I thought about that as I passed their house—the lights were on in the living room, and I could see Mary, Jane, and Jimmy sitting on the couch. Mary had Brian on her knee. I could also hear the TV just a little—the audience laughing at something. I kept walking—down the street, the easiest way. But it didn’t seem that dark. There were streetlights even on our little street, and porch lights, and two cars went by—headlights and taillights. Once I got to the corner of the biggest avenue, I turned left, crossed our little street, and then walked along. There was light everywhere, because the stores were still open, and the movie theater was all lit up, showing something called Thoroughly Modern Millie. I looked at the poster for a while, because I couldn’t figure out much about it, but I started walking again when someone stepped out of the door of the theater and came toward me—no one I recognized, but since my family has lived here such a long time, there are a lot of people who might recognize me that I don’t know. I walked like I knew where I was going, which I did. It was windier along the big avenue, and cars kept going by, so I buttoned my sweater. I said to Ned, “I am taking a walk,” but I couldn’t see the pasture or the trees or anything except the street and the department store up ahead, with all the doors open and people going in and out. I stayed on my side of the avenue, because about twenty people at the department store know Mom and me, and for sure they would ask me what I thought I was doing.
What did I think I was doing?
I didn’t know, and that was the reason that I was enjoying myself.
I look down at my shoes. I am wearing my school shoes—saddle shoes, brown and white, which I think look good. The streetlights make the pavement a sort of dark, sparkly gray. I watch my saddle shoes stepping along, left right left right, and my socks are neatly folded down. I still have my pleated navy-blue skirt on, since I haven’t changed into playclothes, and the pleats wiggle from side to side as I step. I enjoy this part for about a block, then I start looking at the shoes of the people who come toward me, then I look into the windows that I am passing. There are some toys on display at one store, but I don’t want to stop, just to keep walking and walking and walking. Pretty soon, the department store is two blocks behind me, and then three. The street isn’t as well lit as it was by the movie theater and the department store, and two of the streetlights are out. I don’t mind that. I turn left again, because I am a little afraid of crossing the big street, even at a light, and I start up the hill.
Now that it is darker and quieter, I can see Ned a little better. He is standing not far from Ben, and they are picking up the last bits of hay that Abby threw over the fence. I don’t say anything to them—instead, I imagine Mom and Dad, Miss Cranfield, Grandma and Grandpa, and Abby and her dad, too. I am saying to them, “I talk to Ned and he talks back.”
Abby says, “Ned can’t talk, but horses do communicate quite a few different ideas with their bodies and their whinnies.”
Dad says, “Quit making stuff up.”
/> Mom says, “She may not know that she is making anything up, but, sweetie, there is a difference sometimes between what really happens and what we think is happening.”
Miss Cranfield shakes her head regretfully.
Grandma says, “Nothing in the world wrong with making things up, you ask me.”
Grandpa says, “She needs her head examined, is what she needs.”
Mom says, “Daddy, quit joking.” And her eyebrows lower as if she is worried.
Grandma says, “Leave the child alone.”
Abby says, “Horses are more intelligent than most people think they are.”
Abby’s dad says, in a gruff, loud voice, “It’s the carrot or the stick. That’s all they understand.”
I kept walking. It wasn’t that late—lights and TVs were on in almost every house, and when I went past the market, it was still open, which meant that it wasn’t nine o’clock yet. But I didn’t look at my watch. Instead, I took it off and put it in my pocket. I thought that looking at it might make me scared in some way. The hill got steeper.
I knew that I was making things up. I knew that Ned was a horse and that horses can’t talk. I knew that I have an active imagination, as Mom says. I’ve been talking all the time and telling stories for as long as I can remember. Here is how it is. You are saying what happened at school: Frankie Crandall threw up at his desk after lunch, and then Jane Ann Carroll, who was sitting two desks away from him, looked at him, and she threw up, too. This doesn’t happen at school every week, but it does happen. So you’re telling this story, except that you can’t remember what was for lunch, so you say that they served brains, which they never serve, but which is a lot more likely to make someone throw up than a hot dog. So you say they served monkey brains. Then you think that if they served monkey brains, more kids would throw up, so instead of two kids throwing up, you say that five kids threw up, and that one of them, say, Jane Ann Carroll, threw up on her shoes, which makes everyone laugh. So there you are. You started out telling the truth, but then it seemed like more fun to make stuff up. I feel like that was what happened about Ned. However, if you then throw in what I was now thinking of as the Ben Question, you have to ask yourself: What if you told your mom that five kids had thrown up because they served brains in the lunchroom, and then the next day, they served brains in the lunchroom and five kids threw up, including Jane Ann Carroll on her shoes?
I kept walking, and the main thing I wanted to do now was go home and call Abby. If it was not yet nine, then Abby would for sure be up, and I could find out if the horse’s name really was Ben, or if I was just thinking it was Ben when it was really Sven (Grandpa has a friend named Sven, so this was a possibility). The problem was that I was not quite sure where I was—I was farther away from home than the market, because when I was thinking about all of this, I just kept walking, the way that you do when you are thinking and thinking. I halted and looked all around. I’d probably been driven through this neighborhood lots of times, but none of the houses looked at all familiar.
I walked to the corner, crossed the street, and looked at the street sign. It said SINEX. Across the street and farther up, I could sort of see a large, dark building, and I realized that I was somewhere near the junior high school, which used to be the high school. If I was near there, then I was really far away from home. I turned around and started walking back the way I’d come, which is what they always tell you to do when you are lost.
But even I knew that I wasn’t lost—I was in trouble. I walked back down the hill, turned on the street above the market (it was now closed), walked slowly past a barking dog, then came to my school playground, which was huge and extra dark (the school was dark, too—no lights in any windows), then walked around the school. Finally, at the top of our street, I took my watch out and went under the streetlight. It was twenty minutes to ten. I straightened my sweater and my socks and sort of patted my hair and pushed it out of my face, and I walked down the street and then up the steps of our house (there are only two) exactly as if I knew what I was doing, and had never done anything wrong in my life.
The lights were on in the living room, and when I turned the doorknob, the door jumped back and there was Mom in her robe, and she was fit to be tied. She had Joan Ariel in her arms, but she was also holding the phone in one of her hands. She said, in a very “I mean what I say” voice, “I was just calling the police! I thought you’d been kidnapped! Where in the world have you been?”
When a grown-up is mad at you, there are lots of ways to act. What they want you to do is say that you are sorry and will never do that again. They also want you to never tell a lie and not to have done anything wrong. Most of the time, you cannot do all of these things at the same time. The easiest thing is to tell a lie, or rather, a story, kind of like the brains, but something that might really be true. So I could have said, “I was down by the Murphys, talking to Jimmy, and I fell asleep on their porch swing because I was so tired after doing all my work today all day and paying attention every minute.” But I didn’t know if she’d already called the Murphys, so I couldn’t try that, because if they catch you in a lie, then you get into about ten times more trouble than if you just did something wrong. I said, “I went for a walk and got lost.”
“After dark?”
“Well, it wasn’t that dark.”
“Where did you go?”
“Around the block. Up to the school.” All true.
“Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t have anything else to do.” Also true.
“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going, or ask me?”
“You were asleep.” True. I hadn’t yet told any lies.
Now she sounded not quite as mad, and anyway, Joan Ariel started to meep and cheep. She said, “Surely, you know that you aren’t allowed to go walking all over the place after dark.”
I said, “I didn’t know that.” You can say this, but only the first time.
She gave a big sigh, shifted Joan Ariel to one arm, hung up the phone, and then sat down in the rocking chair. She clucked a few times, and finally said, “Well, for goodness’ sake. Go on to bed, and we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
I went over and gave her a good-night kiss, then patted Joan Ariel lightly on the forehead.
Finally, I said, “I’m sorry.” And I was, really. But not that sorry, because I thought our town was way more interesting in the nighttime than it was in the daytime.
As for Ned and Sven, I thought I would be patient, like they are always telling me to be, and ask Abby some questions on Saturday. And we didn’t talk about my walk in the morning, because Mom and Joan Ariel were still asleep, and Grandma, who came to give me my breakfast, didn’t know about it. After I’d eaten my first pancake, I said, “Does anybody ever really run away from home?”
“Used to, when my own pa was young. He said he knew a couple of boys who did. I never knew any, unless you count the ones who went to work on the fishing boats out of Monterey. They were pretty young. But it was an exciting job, so they quit school and went to work.”
“Abby’s brother quit school.”
Grandma didn’t say anything, just shook her head and gave me another pancake.
I didn’t talk to Ned that night, or for the rest of the week, and I did do all my work, including reading ahead in Johnny Tremain, and finished the whole book by Friday.
And Mom didn’t bring my walk up again, either. She would have if I were still an only child.
As soon as I got up to go to my lesson on Saturday, I decided to be as good as I had ever been, because I saw something at school during the week that was very interesting. Now that I could not draw anything, talk to myself, talk to anyone else, raise my hand all the time, or even look out the window, there was nothing to do but look at the other kids, and I noticed Melanie Trevor. She wasn’t sitting in the front row and
she wasn’t sitting in the back row, and she did raise her hand four times, and Miss Cranfield called on her three times, and I am not kidding when I say that I recognized her voice, so yes, I had seen her plenty, but I hadn’t paid any attention to her. She was interesting, and she got more interesting, even though she’s not pretty, she’s not ugly, her hair isn’t long or short, and it is not brown or blond or red, just hair. The thing I noticed about her was that she sat quietly at her desk, no fidgeting, and she looked around, but not like the other kids do, because they are bored and want something to do or because they are making faces at one another, but because she wanted to find out stuff. I suppose that she does find out stuff, too, because each time Miss Cranfield called on her, she answered the question correctly, and on Friday, when I saw that Miss Cranfield was doing some grades, I got up and went to her desk to ask her whether I could go to the bathroom, just so I could see the grade book, and there was “Melanie”—A, A, A, A, A, A. More A’s than I had. Miss Cranfield saw me looking and put her hand over the paper. I went down the hall to the bathroom and stood around for a while and came back.
I was thinking I might sometime make friends with Melanie, but what I did first was wake up Saturday morning and say to myself, “Today I am Melanie.” Then I practiced looking around my room at things (I hadn’t noticed that my old stuffed bunny from two Easters ago had lost an eye, so there you are—I learned something). Then I got dressed in my riding clothes and went downstairs and sat down at the breakfast table. Mom had Joan Ariel propped on her shoulder, and Joan Ariel looked a little cross-eyed, then Mom put her in her bassinet, and Joan Ariel waited to scream for exactly the time it took Mom to make my scrambled egg. Then, while I was eating, she picked Joan Ariel up again, and Dad came into the kitchen, dressed but yawning, and the thing I noticed was that he was not wearing matching socks. But I didn’t say anything.