Chapter 17

After my father left, everything went sort of dim. My mother spent a lot of time in her bedroom with the door closed and little things began to bother her that had never bothered her before. If one of us spilled anything, she'd lose her temper and let us have it. Then she'd feel awful and spend half an hour apologizing to me or to Gerri. We couldn't afford Mrs. Shrub anymore, so my mother and I took turns vacuuming and I helped her change the bed sheets and lug stuff to the basement laundry room. If I took Gerri down with me I'd have to watch her every minute or she'd pour a half a box of soap in someone else's machine or go up to anyone and give him one of her out-of-the-blue-sky hugs. Gerri was finally getting used to the elevator, but it if lurched, or too many people got on, she'd want to get out right away; she once scared the daylights out of a couple who were visiting someone on the fifth floor by letting out a shriek when they tried to roll a baby carriage in.

Her head-banging got worse after my father left, and pretty often my mother would fall asleep in Gerri's room with Gerri on her lap and I'd find her sitting there asleep in the morning. Now, aside from the telephone calls neighbors made to complain, and their pounding on the walls, we'd get notes slipped in our mailbox or under the door. The notes were full of awful words.

Finally, one afternoon, Mr. Parrish called. My mother was out shopping with Gerri because Gerri needed sneakers; my mother had promised to buy her any pair she picked as a reward for learning how to tie her own shoelaces.

Just hearing Mr. Parrish's voice on the telephone again was enough to give me the glacier chills. If he wanted to talk to my mother this time, I knew it had to be about us leaving the apartment. If he was calling to tell us to pack up and get out, where would we live?

I supposed I could go live with my father, but where would my mother and Gerri go? My father called pretty often and he always wanted to know if I was playing the piano and was I practicing enough? I didn't even tell him I'd stopped taking lessons; I just told him the good news, which was that I was playing more than ever. It was the truth; I did like fiddling around at the piano if I didn't have to do scales and all the boring études. After I'd gotten "You Have a Lovely Baby Boy" down pat, I taught myself to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic–which was the best of the numbers Wendy Wellington was going to be playing in the Follies–and when Gerri climbed up on the piano, to tell the truth, as long as she took off her shoes, I just let her. She'd sit up there not bothering anybody, just to listen, and she seemed to like my playing a lot. It was the one time you could bet your life she'd be quiet and not get in anybody's way.

On the day Mr. Parrish called, in she came, wearing her new sneakers, which were really cool, and looked a lot like a couple of the flags of the world I have all over my notebook (Italy and Great Britain) only better. My mother looked pooped but she was smiling; Gerri had learned two new words–shoe and sock–and had practiced saying them all the way home. Gerri sat on the couch next to my mother and looked really pleased with herself. She smiled down at her sneakers and said, "Shew, sock, sock, shew. Sock sock shew shew."

She looked much better these days because my mother made her sleep with two wool scarfs tied around her head so the bumps would stop bumping out no matter how hard she banged. she was almost all healed up and her hair was growing in, and when it was all combed down flat and her face was clean, she looked something like Jane Reilly, who is playing Betsy Ross in the Follies and got the part because she is so pretty.

I wanted to put off telling my mother about Mr. Parrish but I couldn't. I knew she'd boggle like I did just hearing he wanted to come up to talk to her, and sure enough, she got up from the couch and began walking around the room, not really looking at anything, just rubbing her elbows as if she were putting cream on them, and pacing from the windows to the door, and back to the windows again.

I wanted her to tell me it would be all right, that if Mr. Parrish didn't want us living in his building we'd find another place just as good, but she had a look on her face that said I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it. I guess she was thinking what I was thinking. If a good guy like Mr. Parrish didn't want Gerri in his building, who would?

When he came up to the apartment this time, it was after dinner and we were watching television in my mother's room, so it was no problem keeping Gerri out of the living room. She had her eyes glued to the TV because she loves to watch people dance and sing, and luck was with me; channel four had a great musical revue rerun and she wasn't taking her eyes off it.

I left her in there and stood in the hall near the door to the living room where I could hear what was going on. Then right away I was sorry I was listening because I didn't like any of what I was hearing.

"You know I'm sorry, Mrs. Oxley," Mr. Parrish was saying. I heard the rustle of paper. Was it the lease? Was he going to tear it up into little pieces and throw it out the window like confetti or do some other marble-hearted thing?

It wasn't the lease, though. It was a petition. I heard him tell my mother, "Eight tenants have signed this petition, Mrs. Oxley," and I heard my mother cry out like she was having a bad middle-of-the-night dream, "I can't send her back! I just can't!"

To which Mr. Parrish said, "There isn't much I can do."

I couldn't see my mother and I couldn't hear her very well either. She did say something else, but I don't know what it was. As for me, I felt like a wrecking ball was swinging at my life.

Eight people in the building had passed around a paper asking Mr. Parrish to get us out, not let us live in our own apartment any more, get rid of us. I imagined them passing the petition from door to door, getting everybody to run around looking for a ball-point pen to sign it with, happy to be doing something that would help rid the building of a pest like Gerri, like she was a termite chewing up the foundation.

I stood there in the dark hall and no kidding, I felt that hitting the wall with my head wouldn't be enough; I wanted to kick everything in sight, write rotten words on the walls, break windows like some of the East End kids did every day of the week. I wanted to grab Gerri by the hand and drag her around through the building and show everybody that she was no termite and was learning new stuff every day–like not getting the toothpaste all over the sink and always remembering to flush the toilet and eating cheeseburgers without waiting for applesauce.

If I couldn't take her around from door to door, at least I thought I could show her to Mr. Parrish, ask her to say "shew" and "sock," and make sure he saw that she wasn't pulling down the curtains and the curtain rods or screeching in the elevator any more.

When I heard Mr. Parrish telling my mother that he was going to ask us to be out by the first of next month, I figured I had to drag Gerri out there to show how far she'd come, what a good citizen she was turning into, and how if people would only give her a chance, they'd see she was a person like everybody else even if she was a bit of a variation.

I ran into the bedroom and grabbed her hand. "Come on, Gerri," I said, "I want you to go in there and say 'shew' and 'sock' to Mr. Parrish."

Would you believe she wouldn't budge? A bunch of ladies with colored umbrellas were doing Japanese dances on channel four and Gerri wasn't going to move away from the set and miss a bit of it. She was sitting there with Woodie on her lap, her eyes glommed on the screen like she'd never seen anything in her life this interesting. I just stood there thinking how I'd like to give her a nice punch, or one killer-karate chop–whap. That would get her really moving fast. Or I could zap her with one of her own sneakers. Mom would never have to know.

Hey, sneakers. I eyed Gerri's new ones, which she'd slipped off her feet when she sat on the bed to watch the show. I scooped them up and ran out of the room with them, intending to show Mr. Parrish how my mother had worked and worked to get her to make a knot and tie a bow and finally gotten her to be pretty good at it. I arrived in the living room just as Mr. Parrish was leaving. My mother was slumped into a chair staring at the floor, and he was about to go to the front door when I flew in with the sneakers.

"Look, Mr. Parrish," I said, and I help them practically up to his nose in the foyer so he could see how well Gerri had tied the knots and how even she'd managed to get the laces. "My mother taught my sister to tie her own shoelaces," I said. I was out of breath from the dash I'd made and at first I though Mr. Parrish hadn't understood what I'd said. His face stayed sort of blank as if he were watching a movie with the sound turned off and wasn't getting it, so I told him again. "My sister learned how to tie these by herself," I said.

He had heard and he had understood. The bad news was that he didn't really care that Gerri had learned to tie her own shoelaces. He didn't get it, how Gerri was on her way up.

He had that petition in his hand and I guess his mind was set, fixed, and frozen against us. He said, "That's very nice, Neil," in an I'll-be-polite voice, and then he turned away from me, leaving me standing there with the sneakers hanging in my hand like a couple of too-small fish I had to throw back in the river.

"Shews, shews," We both spun around. I guessed the Japanese ladies had stopped dancing, because Gerri was shuffling towards us, smiling from ear to ear, heading right for Mr. Parrish and saying "Shews, shews." Then, just as she was practically on top of us, she did the most incredible thing!

She walked right up to Mr. Parrish and held out her hand, waiting to shake!

No kidding, shake hands instead of hug!

When had my mother finally gotten it through Gerri's head that she wasn't to throw her arms around and squeeze everybody she ran into? When had she taught her that shaking hands was polite and grown-up and civilized and didn't scare people out of their wits?

I guess that really surprised Mr. Parrish. He just held out his right hand and Gerri took it and they shook and it was very serious and solemn, like they weren't just shaking hands, but making a big-time deal.

All of a sudden, his whole face changed; he looked like someone on the highest diving board who suddenly gets too scared to make the dive. Then he said something about losing his job but having to live with his own conscience, and–would you believe it–he took the petition in his two hands and tore it straight across once and then twice, and he handed the pieces to Gerri, and he patted her hair where it had grown back in, and without another word to me or my mother, he turned and walked out of the apartment.

My mother and I were so relieved that Gerri had saved our apartment again, we just took one look at each other and burst out laughing, especially my mother, who needed three tissues to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

I went over and shook Gerri's hand all over again and promised to teach her to say thank you and how to play a C scale, but as it turned out, "thank you" was too hard for Gerri to say, and teaching her to play a C scale was impossible because when I got home from school a couple of days later, the piano was gone.