Chapter 10

There was no fooling around this time. I came home, went right to my room, closed the door, and got to work on my English reports. With the house this quiet, I could practically zip through the work, so by the time my mother and Gerri got home from wherever they'd gone, I'd finished one report and gotten halfway through the other. My mother was in a very good mood. She said she'd found a school that would take Gerri for a few hours every day and teach her letters and numbers. My mother was sure Gerri could be taught to read first-grade words.

Gerri did seem to love turning the pages of books. She couldn't seem to get enough of my photograph albums. I had pictures of all my friends at the old school pasted in there, and some very good shots I'd taken at Lake Alfred, where we always rent a summer cottage. I took a picture of a deer that could have won a contest (except part of his tail was cut off by the camera) and a picture of my mother and father sitting in a rowboat before my father grew his moustache.

Gerri was full of "donder and blitzens"; she was talking a mile a minute as she was turning the pages of my albums; I thought I ought to tell my mother to buy Gerri a scrapbook and some scissors and get her started with a hobby that would take her mind off pulling down curtains. Gerri was being so quiet in my room I actually got to finish my second report and no kidding, it turned out better than my first. I stuck it into my ring-binder notebook and felt pretty pleased with myself. I might even go sit in the first row of old lady Bowring's class tomorrow to give her a break and knock all the kids off their chairs with surprise.

I was in a great mood. My reports were done, I could smell chicken cooking, and I'd even have time to work on my Follies piano piece after dinner. I looked over at Gerri sitting in my rocker and it was like Joe/Jason had said: she wasn't that bad. Once she stopped banging her head and the black-and-blue bumps went down, she would look fine. In the meantime, she was calming down and I didn't mind her hugging me all the time. She wasn't a spoiled brat like other sisters I knew either; you could give her any little thing, like a blue cake of soap or something, and she'd just act like it was Christmas. And no kidding, even if she laughed in the wrong places sometimes, I think she understood a lot of what was going on. Like teasing. She was terrific to tease. If I threw Woodie up in the air she screamed like she was being attacked by the vampire bats, but then–here's the best part–she'd never even try to tell on me. I was tattle-proof.

When Dad got home, I could tell right away he was in a good mood too. He said on the way home he'd gotten an inspiration for a new song he was going to call "You Put a Firecracker in My Heart" and right after he helped me with my Follies piece, he was going to get to work on it.

Dinner went well too: we had the applesauce routine down pat–Gerri knew she'd get some in a dish if she ate some food she had to chew, and tonight she almost looked as if she like the drumstick my mother gave her. She smiled and laughed a lot of ha hi hees and my father looked really pleased.

After dinner, my mother said she had to put up her aching feet for a few minutes, and she went into the bedroom to lie down and watch TV. Dad and I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher and Gerri took out the garbage (I watched very carefully to make sure that only garbage went), and I also tried to teach her to sweep, which she loved. Unfortunately, she took forever to get the crumbs into the dustpan, and as soon as she'd gotten them all swept up she'd pour them out on the floor again so she could start all over.

As soon as Dad and I had the kitchen spic-and-span, we sent Gerri in to watch TV with my mother and headed right for the piano.

Dad thought I should warm up by playing some scales first, so I played the C and G scales and some chords, and Dad gave me some pointers about how to hold my wrists down. Then I tried to run through the second Follies piece and it was harder than the first–written in the key of B flat and very tricky in the chorus. "It needs a little work, but don't worry, you'll do fine," Dad said, but I was worried. Tryouts were the day after tomorrow, I was up against Wendy Wellington, and I hadn't even had the time to go through all the pieces once.

Dad saw my face and gave me a little lecture on trying hard, perseverance, staying power, and never quitting. He told me how his father had forced him to play for two hours every day and how he'd hated Grandpa for it at the time but was now very grateful and wished he could write a letter to Grandpa in heaven to tell him. I pointed out that I only had two days to practice and it looked pretty hopeless, and Dad said that there was no such word as hopeless in his vocabulary. He said we had the whole evening before us and now, the apartment being peaceful and quiet, there was no excuse for not diving right into the piece and working it through until I had it down pat and perfect, and to please note that it said "Vivace," which meant brisk and lively.

I began to play briskly and lively, and couldn't have played for than six bars when we heard my mother scream. It wasn't a regular "Dracula's attacking!" scream, it was more the sort of "Oh, no" cry, like in an opera when the soprano discovers that her boyfriend has been stabbed through the heart by a clown. It had come from the kitchen.

My father jumped up. I jumped up. I saw my father's teeth for a second under his moustache and I heard him say, "Damn," which I think he didn't want me to hear him say. He also said, "Margery, what's happened now?"

I couldn't believe the kitchen scene. Every can of food and soup was out of the cupboard, lined up all over the place. My mother was standing at the stove, both hands clapped over her mouth. Gerri was backed up against the refrigerator. She'd taken about three-quarters of the labels off the cans, and left what looked like a million plain tin cans standing in unidentifiable, identical bunches on the table, chairs, and floor.

"I was watching television and must have fallen asleep," my mother said. My mother was talking through her hands, which still were covering her mouth and made it hard to understand her.

My father's eyebrows moved towards each other. "Geraldine! What the hell did you do that for?" he cried.

Geraldine burst into tears. She cries funny, in very loud, crazy gasps. She started crying and gasping and all of a sudden turned her head toward the refrigerator. Oh, no! She wasn't going to do the head bit now? Sure enough, she began thwacking her head against the Westinghouse and the racket was terrible. My mother rushed over and put her arms around her. "Gerri, Gerri, please, please! It's all right, darling, it's all right!"

The telephone began to ring.

My father shook his head. "Oh, Margery," he groaned, and he kept rubbing his moustache and shaking his head. Then he said, "I'm sorry," but I don't think my mother heard him. The thwacking noise was awful.

My father pretended the telephone wasn't ringing; he just ignored it. He put his arm around me and he said, "Come on, Neil, let's go out for a walk," and he and I left my mother and my sister and we walked out of the apartment.

I was really worried about leaving my mother alone there with Gerri; I knew the telephone call was coming from Mr. Rasmussen or someone else who was really mad. What would he do if no one answered? Would he call the police or come upstairs himself and try to push his way into the apartment? My father told me not to worry. He said the door was locked, my mother was safe, and he wanted to get me out of the house for a walk and a private little talk.

On Sundays we sometimes go to a little park near our building, but at night the park isn't safe, so my father and I walked eight blocks to a new ice-cream place on Albermarle Avenue, even though it was drizzling and we hadn't taken an umbrella.

All the time we were walking, he didn't say much. When we got to the ice-cream place he looked up at the sign listing the twenty-five flavors and he said, "I can't make up my mind. What would you like, Neil?" and I said I wanted pistachio mint, a double dip, so my father ordered that for me and he ordered a single cone of butter pecan for himself, but when it came, he just took one lick and said he really wasn't in the mood for ice cream and he threw the whole cone away!

I guess he wasn't in the mood for talking much either, because all he said was that he thought I wasn't practicing enough piano, and that he wasn't practicing much either. Then he just stood there looking around and waiting for me to finish my cone, like he was more in the mood for thinking than talking.

On the way home, he hardly spoke at all until we were on the corner of Albermarle and Third, waiting for the light to change. Then he suddenly asked me if I'd be happier if we sent Gerri back to the Training Center.

The question really surprised me. Had Dad really thought of doing that, no kidding? I couldn't imagine Dad packing Gerri into the ord and taking her back to the school, dumping her off back there with her suitcase, and leaving her there for good.

I didn't want to tell him that sometimes she reminded me of me, and that a lot of times I thought that what happened to her could have happened to me if I'd been born first.

"What do you say, Neil?" my father said. He was looking up at the sky like someone up there was going to throw down an envelope with the answer in it.

"I don't think so. She doesn't bother me that much," I said, and I know he heard me, but he didn't answer, and all the rest of the way home, he didn't say a word.

***

When we got back to the apartment, everything had quieted down. Gerri was in her room (I could hear her talking to Woodie) and my mother was putting away the last of the unlabeled cans.

"We brought home some ice cream," my father said, and my mother put it into the freezer.

"We're going to be glad to have good desserts, because something tells me with all these unmarked cans we're going to be eating some really funny meals," my mother said. She tried to smile, but only the right side of her mouth seemed to want to go up.

"Why do you suppose Gerri wanted to take all those labels off the cans?" I asked her.

"I don't know, but I bet she had a perfectly logical reason," my mother said.

I didn't really believe my mother then, but I found out Gerri's logical reason the very next day, and I think it took about ten years off my life.