by Edward Eager
"That was nice, wasn't it?" said Susan.
"Yes it was," said Barnaby.
There was a remembering pause.
"We'll be over early tomorrow with the book," Susan told him. "Is it your turn next or Abbie's?"
There was another pause, this time as of inner struggle. Then Barnaby's better nature asserted itself. "Ladies first," he said. "I'll go tell her." And he hung up.
Susan reported this conversation to John, and then stopped in for a good-night look at Grannie.
Grannie was already asleep. Apparently she was really dreaming now, for there was a smile on her face. And as Susan watched, she murmured in her sleep.
"Mrs. Carl Ingoldsby," she said.
Susan smiled, too, and switched off the lamp.
5. Thwarting It
When Barnaby came into Abbie's room, she was already in bed (for he had tiptoed downstairs to the telephone in his stocking feet, after all the lights were out and their parents were asleep).
But once he'd whispered the news that it was her turn next, she stayed awake thinking for a long time. The adventure with Grannie had been the best yet, maybe because part of it had been serious as well as fun. Where could she wish them tomorrow that would be even better?
So far the book's magic had been sort of bookish, the adventure that was more or less Oz and the Half Magic one, and then the Little House books mixed up with Grannie's own life. Maybe that was the book's secret. Maybe it made only book magic because it was a book itself.
Abbie went over her favorite reading in her mind. There were the Betsy-Tacy series and When Molly Was Six (which had been her mother's own favorite when she was a girl). But somehow Abbie felt that Barnaby and John and Susan and even Fredericka would not appreciate a visit with the classic heroines of these.
Poetry usually held the answer to most things.
"Hiawatha?" No, Abbie had had enough of primitive America for a while. "Evangeline" was too sad. "The Lady of the Lake" had a good story and "The Eve of Saint Agnes" was thrilling (though full of hard words) but neither wildest Scotland nor romantic Italy seemed quite perfect for a day's outing. And thinking dreamily of Roderigh Vich Alpine and jellies soother than the creamy curd, Abbie fell asleep.
Wondering a lot about tomorrow the last thing at night often makes a person wake early and eager to begin it. You might try this plan the night before your next arithmetic exam. Of course, sometimes it works the other way and you toss on a sleepless pillow only to turn slothful with the dawn. This is not advised, before an exam or at any other time.
But for Abbie on Wednesday morning the former was the case, and she was up and around and down by half-past six with her bed made and her own breakfast eaten. So that when her mother came downstairs ten minutes later to get breakfast for her father, coffee and eggs were already bubbling on the stove, and the toast was in the toaster and the honey in the pot.
Her mother thanked her and said she could come along on the ride to the station, a thing Abbie always liked to do, for her father was a very special person to her, and indeed to all the family.
This morning, when he came into the kitchen all dressed up in his city clothes, Abbie thought again how handsome he was and how nice, and with that beautiful voice, and wished, not for the first time, that the important television people would discover this about him, too. (But she did not have the book in her hands at the moment, as it was still at Susan's house; so the wish did not count as a magic one.)
If the important television people discovered how wonderful her father was, maybe they would let him sing solos all by himself and he would make more money and her mother wouldn't have to work so hard selling houses and could stay home, and maybe her father could be home more, too.
Of course if he were a solo singer, he would still have to work hard, but maybe it would be at more reasonable hours, and he wouldn't always be running for the seven-twelve and not getting home till the eight thirty-four, just in time to kiss Abbie good night.
And there was more to it. Her father seemed happy in his work and was almost always cheerful and fun, but Abbie knew that standing in the background and singing in the chorus, or a quartet, wasn't really what he had studied for all those years and hoped to be.
The reason she knew this was that she and her father had a secret.
"Why won't they let you sing by yourself, ever?" Abbie had said once, when they were alone. "You're just as good as any of them."
"Well," her father had said, "I don't know about that. But in the first place, I'm too short." To be a leading man, he told her, a person had to be tall, or at least above middle height. Unless he were a comedian, and Abbie's father, while often funny around the house, was not that.
"But don't say anything about it to the others," he went on. "Let's have it be a secret between you and me."
The reason for not telling the others was that Barnaby was too short, too, and his father didn't want him to worry about it. Probably he would choose a career where it didn't matter.
"What about me?" Abbie said. "I'm short, too. So's Fredericka."
But her father told her that for a girl being too short wasn't a bad thing and was even at times considered to be a good one. It didn't seem fair.
This morning, as they stood on the station platform (for the seven-twelve was late for once and her father didn't have to run), Abbie thought to herself that he didn't look too short to her. And she made one more try.
"Daddy, you know where the microphone is. Why don't you just walk straight down to it and sing? Then they'd know!" she said.
"All right, I'll remember that. Maybe I will," said her father. But Abbie could tell from the loving note in his voice and the way she felt him exchanging a smile with her mother above her head that he was only humoring her. And then the seven-twelve screamed twice and came into the station, and her father kissed her and her mother good-bye and went gallantly off, holding himself straight and looking as tall as he could, as if he were in front of the television cameras already.
But Abbie went on thinking about him all the way back to the little white house.
Barnaby and Fredericka were up by this time and busy with their own breakfast and chores, and Abbie helped them, but her mind wasn't on her work and she served Barnaby Rice Krispies, which he wholly detested, instead of Bran Flakes, and let Fredericka make her bed without any hospital corners at all.
And then their mother went off to her office and Susan and John arrived, and Susan handed over the book, and for the next half hour all was squabble and shove as four eager voices surrounded Abbie, advising her what to wish and how to wish it. Abbie's mildness had that effect on people.
But this morning was different.
"Let's go see the Three Musketeers," John suggested, and "Through the mountain with Bilbo Bag-gins the Hobbit," shouted Fredericka. Apparently everyone else had come to the same conclusion Abbie had, that the book preferred to take its lucky masters down the ways of other books.
"At the Back of the North Wind," said Susan, tempting Abbie very much, for she had often longed to go adventuring with the North Wind and Diamond, as has every reader of the great book of that name (except for the ending part, which is sad).
But she shook her head stubbornly to each and every offer.
"All right, where do you want to go, then?" said Barnaby finally.
"To New York," Abbie told him, "and watch Daddy's television show."
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" said Barnaby in disgust. "If that's all you want, why didn't you just go in with him on the train?"
"He wouldn't have taken me," said Abbie sadly. "He never will."
And this was true. Their father always said that it was bad enough looking at the programs on the set at home, but as for watching rehearsals, some depths were better left unplumbed, and he would protect them from the seamier side of life as long as he could. Which was a joke, and yet at the same time Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka knew that he wasn't really joking.
"He wouldn't
want us to do it," said Barnaby now. "Besides, we can't. It wouldn't be a magic thing."
"I think television is magic," said Abbie, "or how do you explain it?"
Barnaby couldn't. His ideas were literary rather than scientific. "But the book only makes book magic," he objected.
"How do you know?" said Abbie. "We haven't tried anything else."
"I heard somebody say," put in Fredericka, "that someday pretty soon there won't be any books. Televisional take their place."
Everybody shuddered at this thought.
"It won't," said Barnaby. "It couldn't. And I don't think we ought to do anything to encourage it and make it think it can."
"I know," said Abbie. "I don't think we should, either. But that's still the wish I want. I want to see the rehearsal, and then I want to see the show."
She had another wish in mind, too, for later on, but she said nothing about it now. Wait till the time.
John and Susan and Fredericka were looking at her with a new respect and as if they hardly recognized her. Abbie had never been so stubborn before or struck out on such an original tack, either. And even Barnaby seemed to be weakening.
"Well," he said, and broke off, hesitating. He turned to John and Susan. "What do you think?"
"I worry about leaving Grannie," said Susan. "Won't all that take the rest of today and tonight, too?"
"That doesn't usually matter, with magic," John pointed out. "When we get back, it's usually still the same time it was when we left."
"It might not be this time," said Barnaby. "If you ask me, making book magic stoop to television would be thwarting it in the worst way. It might turn on us. Still..." And he broke off, hesitating again. Abbie could see that he would like to watch Daddy in the show, too.
"Let's see what Grannie's doing now," said Susan, and all five children ran across the street to the big house.
In the living room Grannie was reading her Western book and hardly looked up when the five children trooped in. This was encouraging, and yet there was no knowing what ideas the book might put into her head to go and do, next minute. Of course, after seeing Grannie in her prime last night, the children felt a new respect. There didn't seem to be much that she couldn't do and do well. But she might forget that she was in her prime no longer. Susan was in a quandary.
But at that minute there was a rap at the door, and it was Grannie's friend Miss Centennial Peterson from down the road, wanting Grannie to come to lunch with her and stay for supper. Miss Centennial was lots younger than Grannie, only seventy-one and still in her first vigor. So that was all right.
"You see, it all works out," said Abbie, when Grannie's knitting and her other goods and chattels had finally been collected and she had been speeded on her way. "We're meant to go."
"All right," said Barnaby. "It's on your own head."
"But let's have lunch first," said Fredericka, for they had been arguing so long that by now it was way past noon.
A sort of picnic meal was rounded up in the kitchen, and everyone hurriedly chipped in to do the dishes (and chipped three plates in the process).
And at last Abbie stood with the book in both hands, and everyone watched respectfully while she made her wish.
The next moment the five children were in the middle of the television show, in the middle of rehearsal.
Abbie's father always said that once you saw what went on behind the scenes at a television show, it was a wonder to you that anything ever came out on the air at all.
And looking around now at the confusion on every hand, the children could only agree.
In one corner dancers danced. In another singers sang (and Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka's father was one of them). On the stage jugglers juggled and acrobats sprang. Several stars of stage and screen sat here and there, looking important and waiting their turn.
And around and among and between these wandered the director, talking every minute and giving orders, with his secretary at his elbow taking down every golden word.
Abbie had wondered if their presence would pass unnoticed and whether she should have included something about this as part of her wish. But luckily there were some child actors waiting to rehearse in one of the sketches, and she and Barnaby and John and Susan and Fredericka sat with these and tried to look like child actors, too.
Fredericka attempted to make friends with the child actors, but they were too busy combing their hair and complaining about their costumes and listening to their mothers' advice about how to steal the audience's attention from the other child actors and made little reply.
And then Abbie said "Shush" as her father appeared on the stage with some of the other singers. And even Fredericka quieted down.
The number that was being rehearsed was a song by a famous rock 'n' roll star. While the star squirmed and writhed and sang (if you could call it that), four men singers swayed back and forth behind him and hummed or uttered nonsense syllables to a counter melody. This is what is known in musical circles as a vocal background.
Looking at the stage, Abbie had to admit that her father was the shortest man on it. But he looked the nicest, too.
And then, because one of the chords sounded wrong, the director had each of the quartet sing his part alone, while the rock 'n' roll star fidgeted and bit his nails and looked bored.
The words of the vocal background were not edifying.
"Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
Skedaddle skedaddle pow!"
the men warbled in turn, on different notes and in different voices.
But when Abbie's father's turn came, his voice rolled out so deep and rich and true that her heart ached with love, and she was sure the important people would discover how wonderful he was right then and there, without any help from the magic at all.
This did not happen. All the director said was, "O.K. Take it straight on from there."
So Abbie held the book tight and wished the important part of her wish. What she wished was that the important people would discover her father tonight before the show was over.
"I'll let you know when," she told the book.
At that moment the director's assistant appeared at the children's elbow. "All right, kids, get up there," he said. "It's time for your bit now." And the child actors trooped obediently stageward.
"You, too," he added, as Abbie and the others remained in their seats. The five children looked at each other, shrugged, and followed the crowd.
Exactly what the act was that they were supposed to be a part of, Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka and Susan and John never knew. Apparently the child actors were expected to crowd around the rock 'n' roll star and ask for his autograph. But Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka and Susan and John had no interest in his autograph, or him either, and they didn't know what lines to say or where to stand, and they were afraid any minute Abbie's father, who was still on stage, would recognize them.
So they stayed as far away from the rock 'n' roll star as they could and huddled together and hid behind each other and bumped into the other child actors and got in their way until the scene was one of utter confusion, and the director pushed around what hair he had in a frenzy.
"What do you kids think you're doing up there?" he shouted. "No, I mean you. You five." Then he started counting. "I didn't order that many kids. Those five must be gate-crashers. How did they get in here?"
Everyone in the studio now turned to look at the five children, and everyone included Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka's father. He looked, looked again incredulously, and started forward. Abbie clutched the book to her and begged it to help. And it did, in the simplest way it knew.
Abbie's father stopped short, blinking. And the director said, "Where are they? Oh, they've gone. Good riddance."
"What's up?" hissed Fredericka.
"We're invisible, I think," said Abbie. "To them, I mean." (For they could still see each other perfectly well.)
"And now," said the director, "where was I?" Then he sank into
a chair. "It doesn't matter. I can't go on. Those kids have shattered my mood. Might as well break for dinner now. Everybody be back in one hour."
And the crowd started filing out the doors.
Fredericka now suggested that there were all manner of interesting things five invisible children could find to do in a deserted television studio. "We could broadcast from coast to coast. I'll do my scarf dance."
But Barnaby told her sternly that they'd caused enough trouble already, and they'd better make themselves scarce from now on till the actual program began.
So the five children left the studio and wandered out into the street, which happened to be Broadway.
New York City has a magic of its own, even when you are not a child and not invisible. When you are, it is even better. And John and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka now tasted it to the full.
They pressed unseen through the madding crowd, causing people to cry, "Who're you pushing?" to other people who hadn't been pushing one bit. They rode the subway to Forty-second Street, changed trains, and rode back again. They walked a block across town and gazed upon the topless towers of Rockefeller Center. They entered a doughnut shop and invisibly ate doughnuts and paid for them with invisible hands until quite an interesting panic spread among the city's other doughnut-fanciers.
During the stroll, Abbie was with them in body but not in spirit. She was too busy watching all the clocks they passed and waiting for it to be time to get back to the studio.
Eventually it was, and the five invisible forms entered the theater part and secured seats in the front row. When people came and sat on their invisible laps they squirmed and made their invisible knees as knobbly as possible till the people moved away, saying, "Wouldn't you think the television company could afford springs? I'm going to write to Mr. Minow!"
And at last the drums rolled and the spotlights beamed and the grand super-spectacular transcontinental variety show began.
During the early moments Abbie's father was not conspicuous. In the opening number he stood in the back row. In the next two songs he was part of a group that sang vocal backgrounds out of range of the camera. Halfway through the program he carried on a tree that was part of the scenery. He did this so well and so neatly that Abbie wanted to applaud, but she restrained herself. The time would come.