Chapter Four

I stayed in bed late the next morning, making sure Dad had left for work before I got up, so I wouldn’t have to face him at breakfast. Then I gulped down my own breakfast quickly and headed across the snowy lawn toward Carla Mae’s house next door.

Carla Mae and I always used our special path between the row of poplar trees that separated our yards, and at any time of the day you were likely to see one or both of us come shooting through the trees in mid-air and land with a thud on the lawn. Now, with snow on the ground, and big, clunky overshoes and a heavy coat, and an armload of books, it wasn’t easy to make the leap, but I got a running start and landed almost standing up in Carla Mae’s yard. I thought of going back and trying it again to see if I could get a better landing, but it was getting late.

I pounded on the back door of the Carters’ house with our special knock so Carla Mae would know it was me.

“I’m not ready yet!” I heard her yell from inside, so I went in to wait for her.

She was in the kitchen finishing up her breakfast, and the place was in its usual uproar. Her four-year-old sister, Debbie, was standing on a chair in front of the stove, frying an egg for her own breakfast. Minnie, their fat, black Scottie, was sitting on another chair at the table and finishing up somebody’s leftover sausage. Two-year-old Tim came waddling through in his diaper, with his bottle firmly clenched in his teeth, and several other people of assorted sizes and shapes were in and out of chairs and under the table and all over the kitchen. The table was a hodgepodge of half-eaten food, three-wheeled trucks, one-eyed dolls and broken crayons, all in happy confusion. Carla Mae grabbed one last piece of sausage before Minnie could get to it, and pulled on her coat.

As we left I thought how different her family was from mine and how they seemed to be able to understand each other so much better than we did. I was feeling very depressed by the time we got into the school cloakroom and started struggling out of our heavy coats and galoshes. Then Jerry Walsh made a crack abut my grandmother, and that was the last straw. I clunked him right over the head with one of my wet galoshes, and a real fight got started.

Miss Thompson was there immediately.

“Stop that at once!” she said, and pulled us apart.

“She hit me first,” said Jerry in his whiny voice.

“You asked for it!” I said.

“He started it!” Carla Mae said, coming to my rescue. “He was making fun of her grandmother.”

“I was not,” said Jerry.

“You were so!” I answered.

“It’s not my fault your grandmother’s an old character!” he said.

“She is not a character!” I shouted.

“She looks like a nut, pulling that little red wagon!”

“It’s my wagon, and she can pull it any damn time she wants!”

“Addie!” said Miss Thompson sternly. “There will be no swearing here.”

“She takes my wagon to the grocery store,” I explained to Miss Thompson. “She’s too old to carry big, heavy bags.”

“Yeah,” said Jerry, snickering. “And when she wants Addie to come home she sticks her head out the window and blows a police whistle!”

“Sounds like a good system to me,” said Miss Thompson.

“It’s nutty!” said Jimmy.

“Say that once more, and I’ll punch you in the nose!” I snarled.

“Now, calm down, Addie,” said Miss Thompson with her hand on my shoulder. “You children don’t seem to know the difference between a ‘nut’ and a ‘character.’ Come inside the classroom, and we’ll talk about it.”

She started into the room with the others, and Jerry and I lingered behind, both hoping to get in the last word.

“You sure got up on the wrong side of the bed, you grump!” he said.

“You better button your lip, creep!” I hissed at him, hands on my hips. “I dare you to say one more thing to me.”

At that moment, Miss Thompson looked back to see what we were doing, and motioned us both to come into the room. We did, and I had the last word.

Miss Thompson talked to us about “nuts” and “characters,” and we all came to the conclusion that a nut was someone who was crazy, while a character was just someone who was different, like Thoreau or Columbus, and not a bad thing to be at all.

After our discussion, we practiced Christmas carols for the caroling we were going to do that night, and I had a sudden inspiration as we practiced. I told them that when we stopped at my house I wanted them to sing a certain carol that was my grandmother’s favorite. The class agreed and we practiced it. I wondered how it would go over at home.

After school that afternoon, our committee for buying Miss Thompson’s present trooped uptown to Main Street to do our shopping. The class had had the good sense to elect four girls—no boys, thank heavens—so I knew we would be able to choose something nice. Boys were so dippy to go shopping with. They always giggled and acted crazy if you tried to pick out something personal like bubble bath or dusting powder, and the year before there were boys on the committee, and they were going to buy Miss Thompson a horrible, dowdy wool shawl. They simply didn’t understand glamour and good taste, and we had no use for them on a shopping trip. I don’t think they minded at all.

The committee got into three separate snowball fights on the way uptown and had to stop and talk to a lot of people. It was one of those towns where you knew who lived in every house and recognized every car and said hello to everyone on the street. There was one doctor, one movie theatre, and five bars and five churches, which the people of Clear River found a nice balance of sin and salvation. We also had a weekly town newspaper, where it was big news if Mrs. Dinsley wallpapered her upstairs bedroom.

We decided to try shopping at the drugstore first, because Mr. Brady always had a good selection of gifts. We passed the IGA grocery on the way, and while the other girls went on ahead, I peeked at the price tags on the Christmas trees standing outside on the sidewalk. I was hoping that, since Christmas was so near, the prices might be reduced, but I saw that the trees were still too expensive for me to buy one from my allowance, especially after my Christmas shopping.

Our gift-buying committee looked at just about everything Mr. Brady had in the whole drugstore and couldn’t agree on anything. I said I was nearly ready to give up and give Miss Thompson something practical like nose drops, and Tanya Smithers said that was the most disgusting thing she had ever heard of. I wanted to say, “Wait till you see the icky gloves I got for you,” but I didn’t. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Mr. Brady suggested Evening in Paris cologne.

“She buys that all the time,” he said.

“We know,” said Carla Mae. We knew a lot of such details about Miss Thompson, because we came right out and asked her.

“We don’t want to give her stuff she buys herself!” I said, annoyed at everyone’s lack of imagination. We turned down a comb and brush set and a manicure set and bubble bath and a brooch shaped like a Christmas tree. Mr. Brady’s suggestion of a curling iron just made us laugh, because we all knew Miss Thompson had naturally curly hair. I explained to Mr. Brady that that was why her hair style looked like Betty Grable’s.

We told him we had four dollars and twenty-five cents to spend, and he said he thought he had something we might like, though it was a bit expensive. Then he got a box down from a high shelf and brought out the most beautiful thing we had ever seen—a fabulous jewelry box made of deep blue mirror-glass.

“Zowie!” I said. “That looks like something a real movie star would have on her dresser!”

“Yeah,” sighed Carla Mae. “Betty Grable would like that!”

Mr. Brady lifted the lid, and the box began to play “The Blue Danube.” We all stared at it goggle-eyed. It was lined with pale blue velvet. We wanted it.

“How much is it?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

Mr. Brady turned the price tag over, and I saw that it read $5.95. I started to tell him we couldn’t afford it when he pulled out a pencil and crossed out the $5.95 and wrote in $4.25.

“Been meaning to put this thing on sale for some time now,” he said. “Glad I remembered to do it in time for Christmas.” We all smiled at him, and he smiled back, and we took the box and carried it very carefully home and wrapped it.

After supper, we met to go caroling, and in a half-hour we came by my house, where Grandma was making hot chocolate for us. We all came into the kitchen, stomping the snow off our boots and unwrapping our mufflers. As soon as we could get out of our boots, we all went into the living room, blew our noses and got ready to sing. I stepped forward and said, “Now we’re going to sing a special request.” I didn’t say it was Grandma’s special request, as I had told the class. In fact, it wasn’t her request at all.

Dad was settled in his chair, and Grandma in her rocker as we began to sing. When Dad heard the first strains of “Oh, Christmas Tree,” he looked at me suspiciously, and I looked away. He knew what I was up to. We sang every verse, and it took quite a while. When I got up the courage, I looked over at Dad again, and I saw that he had a very sad look on his face and seemed to be far away somewhere, lost in his thoughts. I wondered if singing “Oh, Christmas Tree” had been such a good idea after all.