By the time I arrive, about forty kids are eating and bouncing around the barn and Mayday is dressed up like a bullfighter with a red cape, black boots, and an eye mask. He's wandering around the barn mingling and mooching handouts. Peanuts is dressed like a clown, but fortunately she's locked in her stall.
A record player blasts limbo music while Mrs. Thompson and her sister-in-law have corralled about twenty kids into doing backbends and slithering under a bamboo pole they're holding. After each successful passage the crowd whoops with delight. After a fall they laugh uproariously and make catcalls. No, the Thompsons were never going to get irate calls from parents asking, "What goes on in that barn of yours? Is there no adult supervision?"
Normally I'd be on the receiving end of a nice friendly welcome from Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. They greet all their teenage guests individually, the way salespeople make eye contact when a customer enters a shop, partly as a courtesy and partly to signal that they're watching every move you make. However, this evening I receive only the forced smiles, furrowed brows, and hasty hellos that mean: You're a bad influence, and one bad banana can ruin the bunch.
I immediately locate Gwen and a few other friends.
"Is it true that you took the golf money to pay gambling debts?" Mary-Ella immediately chimes in. "And that—"
"A loan shark is threatening to break your knees?" Seth finishes for her.
As I explain my total lack of involvement with the theft I feel as if they really want to believe me, but that at the end of the day they probably don't. It's hard not to turn around and leave and forget about the party altogether. I should have taken Mr. Bernard's advice and worn a costume—for instance, a sheet over my entire body.
However, they eventually drift to other subjects, and if they believe I'm guilty they don't appear to hold it against me. Or else they decide Mr. Exner is so stingy that being robbed serves him right.
Real relief arrives in the form of Jane. She takes me aside and says, "Hallie, I'm sorry that I initially thought you stole the money. I've since realized that if you had taken it then you never would have come over to my house that day thinking that I took it. You were trying to protect me—you didn't want to rat me out or else let me get caught."
"Thanks. That makes two people who know I didn't steal it—you and me—and how many who think I did take it? What's the population of the United States these days, around two hundred and eighty million?" And though I say this sarcastically, it's a good feeling to have Jane certain of my innocence. Because the Stocktons would have to be categorized as hopeful, almost sure, but not proof positive. How could they be?
"Then it must have been Cheap Old Exner," declares Jane. "He's always rounding down my time sheet so that he doesn't have to pay me for the half hours. And he rips people off in all sorts of little ways—selling factory outlet stuff, you know, slightly irregular sneakers and socks, at full price."
"He repackaged the golf balls I found and sold them as new!"
Gwen and a group of friends begin to migrate in our direction.
"The only way to fix this is to find out for sure who did steal the money," Jane says quickly.
"No shit, Sherlock," I reply. "Will you help me?"
"Of course."
"Keep an eye on Cheap Old Exner, look around the stockroom, ask him what he thinks happened to the money, and see if he acts at all nervous."
"You got it." Jane gives me a quick hug as the rest of the crew arrives, biting into burgers hot off the grill.
For a while we all stand around the jumping hurdles eating and talking. Sheryl Shaeffer wouldn't dream of coming to a kiddie carnival like this, especially with her new Big Time college boyfriend, though I spot another member of her family whom I try my hardest to ignore. To no avail. Brandt eventually slinks over and there's something weirder-looking than usual about him, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Oh, he's wearing those stupid Mr. Spock ears. If nothing else, they at least make him look a little older.
"Can I make you a sundae, Hallie?" he earnestly inquires in that trombone voice.
With the way I've been getting the cold shoulder around town, I don't have the heart to give it to Brandt. Fortunately Jane doesn't have the same problem. And also she is holding the pinata bat. "Mr. Spock," she says, "the whole point of a make-your-own-sundae bar is to do exactly that."
He looks fearfully at Jane and then turns back to me. "Hallie, I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry about what my mother said, and that I know you didn't do it."
"Thanks," I say politely and look past him to where the limbo is morphing into a conga line with Mayday prancing in the lead.
But Brandt doesn't appear satisfied and nervously glances up as if a vulture is circling overhead and casting dark shadows, on the earth. Then he stares directly into my eyes. "No. What I mean is ... that I know you didn't do it, and if you want to call me ..."
This time I solidly meet his gaze. "Okay. I understand."
Jane taps her bat on the ground as if she's warming up to whack him over the head, and he scurries away at warp speed. "First it's a sundae, and next thing you know he's doing the Vulcan Meld on you," she says after he's gone.
"Look at the bright side. I've just increased the number of people who don't think I stole the money by fifty percent."
I don't see Craig anywhere, but then those football guys usually arrive in a pack around eleven o'clock, as if it's not cool to show up before then. However, when he does turn up it's with Julietta Tarnasas on his passing arm. Gwen comes flying over to give me the scoop. It seems the new object of Craig's affection is a freshman, of all things. An exotic and stunning exchange student from Buenos Aires, certain to be discovered by a modeling agency within the next week or two. So much for Gwen's matchmaking skills.
"When did this happen?" I ask.
"Last weekend," says Jane.
"We were afraid to tell you," says Gwen. "She got drunk at a church retreat and threw herself at him. My mom says that Argentineans are very social people."
"It'll never last," adds Jane. "After they hooked up, he probably felt bad because she doesn't know that many kids and her host family is this boring Methodist couple in their sixties."
"Oh right, so he's just doing a good deed, a form of community service," I say.
"If you like him then why didn't you go to his football game when he invited you?" Gwen demands, as if it's all my fault.
"Because he didn't ask me to his game!" I shout over the Hawaiian drumbeat. "His exact words were 'maybe,' 'perhaps' he'd 'hopefully,' 'possibly' see me there."
Gwen does her combination sigh, shrug, eye roll that means how dumb can you be? "That's how a guy asks you out, Hallie. What were you waiting for, a subpoena?"
I look to Jane for help, but she nods in agreement. "It's like a dog scratching at the back door," says Jane. "It's their way of telling you they want to go out."
"My older brother is dating a girl because she looks good with his car," comments Gwen, as if this explains everything.
Across the room Craig and Miss Argentina share a banana split, feeding each other off the same spoon and giggling. Gross. And of course he looks as if he just jogged off the cover of Sports Illustrated, with the kind of perfect muscles and ruddy tan that only guys who never think about building muscles and getting tan seem to possess. He glances up and catches me looking directly at him. I wave and mouth "Hi." He nods and turns back to Evita. A chilly reception, and that isn't even taking the ice cream into account. I assume that Craig has been informed of the latest addition to my criminal record. And he certainly has no reason to believe otherwise. "So now what?" I ask.
Gwen eyes the crowd like a hungry Komodo dragon. "See Seth over there?"
Seth Gilmore is playing volleyball with some of the swim team and other guys who don't play contact sports.
"Yeah, what about him?"
"Make out with him," Gwen instructs me.
"No way!"
"Well then get him up to the hayloft l
ong enough so that I can spread a rumor that you're making out with him so that Craig will hear about it."
Again I look to Jane to rescue me and again she does just the opposite. "My father says that at his company they prefer to hire people who currently have jobs. It's the same for dating. You look more appealing when you're on someone else's payroll as opposed to being unemployed."
"What makes you think that Seth will make out with me?" Actually, he isn't all that bad. Seth has straight brown hair and hazel eyes, and though he had bad acne freshman year it's all cleared up now. Besides, I haven't kissed a guy since the summer. And I don't want to get completely out of practice.
"Seth will swap spit with anyone," Gwen assures me.
"Thanks a lot," I say.
"No, I just mean he went out with Paula since, like, eighth grade, and they broke up last month and so now he's on a rampage. Trust me," says Gwen.
"Trust her," agrees Jane. "Though there's always your boyfriend from the starship Enterprise." Jane nods in the direction of the makeshift volleyball court where Brandt happens to be serving. One of his triangular rubber ears drops off into the dirt just as I look over. Brandt would of course interpret this as a sign that we're destined to be together. I take it as just the opposite.
And that's how I end up making out with Seth Gilmore in the Thompsons' hayloft while "The Hokey Pokey" blares down below and pigeons scratch around above and I spend the next day picking little pieces of yellow straw out of my hair and fingernails.
************************************
The following morning Ms. Olivia looks up from her tea and asks if I've spent the night in a Monet painting. Then she inquires if I'm ready to begin our tutoring session. I say sure, even though it's Sunday and I thought we'd have the day off. Ms. Olivia keeps to a rather odd schedule, and she certainly doesn't abide by the notion of working Monday through Friday and then having weekends free. Sometimes she gives me Wednesday or Thursday as a vacation day and then decides to teach me about Herodotus at noon on a Saturday. She says that the body feels the pull of the moon, like the ocean has tides, and therefore certain subjects are best absorbed in the evening while others are best mastered during a storm. Likewise, she claims that the American Revolution is best studied on a farm or in a public park so that you can experience the trees and the sky and the grass and everything that the colonists were fighting for.
Also, Ms. Olivia doesn't believe in alarm clocks. She claims that they leave the people who depend upon them in a constant state of nervousness. I for one couldn't agree more.
Chapter 28
Under the Gun ♥
By the time I finally move into the main house it's the first week in November and the summerhouse is turning chilly, with morning frost flowers etched onto the windowpanes. Even the space heater I'd located in the shed can't prevent my breath from rolling out like gray mist across the green woolen blanket while I wait for sleep to come. As I patch together the pieces of the golf money scandal and finalize my plan to resolve it, most nights sleep doesn't arrive for a very long while.
Nor am I the only one feeling the onset of winter. Alvin and his merry band of chipmunks have gone so far as to borrow one of my socks for added insulation in the rafters, where they've set up light housekeeping. However, they're in the habit of dropping a few nuts on my head in return, and so I guess it can be considered a fair exchange. I take it as a good sign that my roommates are willing to have open trade relations.
After I'd finished painting the upstairs bedrooms, moldings, and radiator covers, Mr. Bernard, Mr. Gil, and Ms. Olivia set to work converting Mr. Bernard's junk room into a bedroom. Granted, a bedroom with a lot of junk in it. The makeover was supposed to be a secret. But first of all, nobody in that house is very good at keeping secrets. And second, it was hard not to hear Mr. Bernard in there cursing while he was trying to assemble the antique four-poster canopied twin-sized bed and then arguing with Ms. Olivia about the color scheme. (She wanted carnation pink, while he insisted upon deep jade. She won.) But I don't want to spoil the surprise, and so when they lead me upstairs, open the door, and shout "Tada," I do my best to look astonished.
Next to the bed is a round wooden nightstand with scalloped edges, a little drawer near the top, and a utility shelf at the bottom. On the table sits a dainty lamp with a white porcelain base covered by a pale green silk shade trimmed with red velvet brocade. Opposite the bed stands an elegant rosewood bureau with an oval mirror in a gilt-edged frame hanging above it. On the wall perpendicular to the bed and opposite the door are some matted and framed samplers of embroidered flowers I'd seen down at Mr. Bernard's shop.
"So, Nell, will you finally come in from the wild?" Mr. Bernard asks after I finish absorbing the transformation. Mr. Bernard often addresses me as Nell because he claims that Jodie Foster and I are the only two girls in America who have perfect teeth despite having lived in the wilderness.
"And look," exclaims Ms. Olivia, "there's a drainpipe located directly outside your window so you can come and go at any time without using the front door."
I glance at the escape hatch with approval but also wonder how she knows about the erratic comings and goings at my previous dwelling.
"This is wonderful. You're very generous." I don't really know what else to say. It is truly an odd moment when you officially move in with a bunch of eccentric older people who you met through an advertisement at the Star-Mart.
"Now it's just like a kibbutz!" Ms. Olivia says delightedly. "I always wanted to live in a commune, but the Judge would never allow it. He said it was bad enough having to share a bathroom with just one other person."
I notice that someone, probably Mr. Gil, has placed a worn copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the nightstand. I walk over to the bed and examine the beautiful soft white coverlet with tiny pink roses stitched into it that match the canopy.
"Wow, this is gorgeous. It must have cost a lot of money. Please let me help pay for it."
"Don't be ridiculous," snaps Mr. Bernard. "Mother has fantasized about decorating a girl's room for over three decades. In one month you've removed all the pressure on Gil and me to have grandchildren. We should be paying you."
Mr. Bernard catches me eyeing a huge marble statue of an angel that has been pushed into a corner behind the door.
"I haven't found a place for that yet," explains Mr. Bernard.
"We thought we'd just try to hide it back there for the time being," says Mr. Gil. "Maybe you can hang some dirty clothes on it or make it into a Rococo belt rack."
I nod in agreement. Obviously it's a challenge to camouflage a two-hundred-pound, six-foot-high marble statue.
I walk over to the window, part the lace curtains, and peer down at the driveway where the silver birch trees, now spindly and naked, cast thin shadows. They'll be pretty again once the snow comes. For a moment I feel slightly guilty. Not for accepting the Stocktons' hospitality so much as for betraying my own mother and father. Forsaking them because they couldn't provide individual rooms for their children and one-on-one parenting. But deep down I also know that the real reason I left isn't that simple. And now that they believe I'm a criminal-at-large they probably wouldn't let me come home again anyway.
My resolutions are suddenly interrupted by a tan and white squad car pulling into the driveway and then the familiar heft of a resolute-looking Officer Rich hoisting himself out of the vehicle by using the top of the doorframe for ballast.
"Uh-oh," I say. For some reason I suddenly doubt I'm going to get a chance to sleep in my new room, because there's already a narrow cot with a lumpy mattress waiting for me somewhere else.
The crunch of wheels on gravel brings Ms. Olivia to my side.
"Who is it?" inquires Mr. Bernard.
"The gendarme," replies Ms. Olivia in a voice I think is more eager than apprehensive.
"I'm pretty sure that this time he's going to take me," I worry aloud.
Mr. Gil and Mr. Bernard arrive at the windowsill
in time to have a look for themselves. Officer Rich ambles up the driveway, pausing every few feet to take a breath and glance toward the front door, as if considering a hundred things he'd rather be doing.
"Whatever happens, don't go quietly," Ms. Olivia firmly instructs me. "In fact, run out barefoot and shackle yourself to the front porch right this minute." Her voice trills as her fingers dance up to her pearl necklace and begin twisting the knot on the end of it. "I'll call the newspapers and the local TV. Better yet, try to persuade the constabulary to handcuff you to the porch themselves." She prances over to the doorway.
"Mother!" Mr. Bernard practically shouts. "Just hold it right there. This isn't a game. It's someone's life."
"That's exactly what you don't understand," Ms. Olivia replies. "It's never about one single action, it's the larger picture, the broader implications."
Then she turns the beam of her enthusiasm back to me. "Now, after you've secured yourself to the rail the reporters will arrive and you must inform them that you're initiating a hunger strike."
"Yes, tell them you're only fortifying yourself with chocolate Yoo-Hoo until a settlement is reached," Mr. Gil adds nonchalantly. He's acting as if the police pulling up in the driveway is a daily occurrence around here and nothing to get alarmed about.
The doorbell chimes. From the window I can see Officer Rich shifting his weight from one foot to the other and scratching his head. He certainly doesn't appear to be relishing the task ahead.
"Now, Gil, if you and Mother will only stop this foolishness we can create a plan ...," begins Mr. Bernard.
Only Ms. Olivia has already darted off, most likely to alert the media.
"What do I do?" I ask the two of them.
"Stay right here and let me handle this," Mr. Bernard says authoritatively.
But I'm worried about Ms. Olivia and the fact that I'm supposed to be wrapping myself in garden hose and somehow attaching myself to the front stoop. Because suddenly I don't want to go to prison, especially for something that I didn't do. I look over to Mr. Gil, as if he's the tiebreaker.
Beginner's Luck Page 17