Chapter 7

My mother had heard the doorbell too, and was almost behind me when I opened the door. "What are you doing here, Joe?" I said.

"Jason, Jason, Jason, for crying out loud!" said Joe/Jason. "I brought you the sheet music, for the tryouts. What are friends for, baby?"

I had the door open just a crack so Joe/Jason couldn't look into the apartment. "Thanks," I said, and I took the music and tried to close the door.

Although Dad had gotten Geraldine away from the piano, I wasn't sure what she was going to do next. "Well, I'll see you around," I said, but my mother heard me. "Aren't you going to invite your friend in, Neil?" she asked, and then it was impossible not to.

Joe/Jason was dying to come in and look around anyway. I could tell by the way he accepted the invitation right off and the way his eyes were jumping all around the place like they were electric. I kind of don't know Joe/Jason well enough to figure out if he's really my friend or was just curious to see if Gerri was some kind of freak who would take off her clothes and dance around the carpet in her underwear or do something just as wild that the kids at school would love to hear all about. I just crossed my fingers and prayed that Gerri wouldn't do anything too weird.

"Would you and your friend like a snack?" my mother asked.

At the moment, Gerri was sitting on the floor near the couch and pushing her fingers into the rug. I thought if we just went straight to my room Joe/Jason might not even notice her.

"No thanks, Mom. We'll just go hang around."

But I was dead wrong. We hadn't taken one step when Geraldine spotted us, and one look at Joe/Jason and she let out one of her ha-hee-hiheeees, which rooted Joe/Jason right to the floor. It was sort of a welcoming laugh and in a minute she had scrambled up and was coming right towards him–shuffle / shuffle, shuffle / shuffle. She was learning to put speed on it.

I could see Joe didn't know what to do and so just stood there frozen, no moving, the way people do when a two-thousand-dollar vase is about to topple off a table.

Which gave Geraldine a great opportunity to come over and throw her arms around Joe/Jason and give him a hug like he was her best friend and she hadn't seen him in five years.

Poor Joe/Jason. He let a sort of little laugh come out of his throat and his face turned the color of sunsets and his eyes rolled up in his head.

"That's enough, Geraldine," I said, and she let go. She said, "Dasher-dancer," and let her mouth stay open like she was going to say something else.

"What did she say?" Joe/Jason wanted to know.

"Let's forget it. Let's go to my room," I said.

"Vixen-blix," Gerri said, and Joe/Jason said, "What did she say? Is that how she talks? Can you understand her? How do you know what she's saying? Why is her head banged up?" And then we passed my parents' bedroom and he saw the mess in there and he said, "Hey, you're not moving, are you?"

"Listen," I said, trying not to get annoyed. "Did you come in here to visit or to ask questions?"

"Take it easy," Joe/Jason said. "Don't be sensitive. She's not that bad. Really."

I was glad Joe/Jason wasn't there that night at dinner. My mother made meatballs and spaghetti because she thought those foods would be soft enough for Gerri to chew, but I guess Gerri didn't like the look of what was on her plate, or maybe it reminded her of something she didn't want to be reminded of. I remembered what Dad has said about trying to get her to eat carrots. She wouldn't touch the spaghetti. My mother begged her and I showed her how to wrap it around a fork and my father said, "Come on, Gerri, dig in." but Gerri just sat at the table staring at the food and looking as if she was going to burst into tears.

My mother's face was very red, partly from cooking and partly from worry. She said Gerri hadn't eaten anything except oatmeal for breakfast and an ice-cream cone at the park and might get undernourished if she didn't learn to eat solid food.

She put the fork in Gerri's hand and tried to guide it into her mouth, but the spaghetti fell off the fork and some of it fell on the table and some slid into Gerri's lap. I said, "Yuk." My father got up and said he really wasn't that hungry and would just grab a sandwich before he went to bed. A minute later we heard him at the piano and my mother and I had to practically sit on Gerri to keep her from running into the living room after him.

Then I got a really great idea. "I think she's just used to mushy food," I said, and I ran to the cupboard and looked for something soft she might like. I found a jar of applesauce and put it into a dish. Right away Gerri's eyes lit up. I set the dish on the table where she could see it and I said, "Spaghetti first, then applesauce." I pointed to each thing to make it clear that she had to eat some of what she thought was the bad stuff to get the good stuff, and you know, it worked? I'm not saying she didn't make a mess of the spaghetti; the kitchen looked like we'd had a tomato-sauce explosion–but a plate of spaghetti and one meatball went down Gerri's hatch! My mother told me she didn't know what she'd do without me–and now would I please take out the garbage? Some reward!

"Why do I always have to take the garbage out?" I said because that's what I say every night when my mother or father reminds me to do it, and all of a sudden Gerri said, "Bobbidge," very clearly. "Bobbidge." It didn't sound like any of the reindeer; she was trying to say "Garbage"! "Did you hear that, Mom?" I asked, and I could see my mother had heard it all right; she was standing at the sink with the dish rag in her hand smiling from ear to ear.

"She wants to take out the garbage!" I said. "And I'm sure as anything going to teach her!"

At first my mother looked uncertain, but then she said, "I suppose it's safe enough," and she handed me the bag of trash out of the container and said, "Please, be very careful and stay with her every minute, Neil."

So Geraldine and I went down the hall to the incinerator, which is a sort of closet in which there's a little door in the wall that opens like an oven, and you simply throw the bag of garbage through the door and it travels down a chute to the basement. Easy. Geraldine looked really interested. She watched me do it, then I took her back to the apartment and gave her a paper bag and filled it with some junk I pulled out of a wastebasket and I said, "Now you do it, Gerri."

Gerri and I went back to the incinerator together and sure enough, she pushed her own bag of garbage down the incinerator very efficiently, just like she'd been doing it all her life. "Great!" I said. "Good job!" and she looked really thrilled. She said, "Bobbidge, bobbidge!"

I felt great. She loved doing it! From now on, it would be her job. I'd never have to take out the bobbidge again.