The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

by Lois Lowry

  "I guess so," she said uncertainly.

  "Mr. Keretsky," asked Stacy, "why do you live all alone? Don't you have a family?"

  He was silent for a minute. He sighed and shifted in his chair, still grasping Caroline's hand. "I don't want to tell a sad story on such a pleasant night," he said. "So I will tell only a little of what happened to me, and you must not let it make you feel sad, because it is many years ago, and now you see how things are: we are all happy here together!

  "When I was a young man—you will never believe this, Caroline, but it is true—I was a painter. I was not a great painter, but I was a good one, I think. This was in Europe. And then, in Europe, came the war.

  "Now, I am not going to talk about the war, because you all know that war is a bad time. I lost my family."

  Caroline held tightly to his hand. "Did you have children?" she asked.

  He cleared his throat. "A little girl. She was about your age, Caroline, though she was not as—what would the word be?—incorrigible? I don't mean that as a bad thing. In fact, if I may borrow your mama's way of speaking, it is the ninety-fourth thing that I love about Caroline, I think: that she is incorrigible."

  "Me too," said Joanna Tate from the end of the table.

  Gregor Keretsky went on. "Now, that was the sad thing, that my family—my parents, my wife, my daughter—were gone. But it is long ago, and I will not dwell upon that. I will tell you of the other thing that I lost. Can you guess what it is, Caroline?"

  She nodded in the dark. "Colors," she said, squeezing his hand. "You lost colors. I think that's very sad."

  "I thought so, too, at the time, because of course I could never paint again. But as I told you, I was not a great painter. The doctors could find no reason that my colors had disappeared. They wrote about me, in journals and medical books.

  "I had to find another profession. And this is the happy part. I had always been interested in science, and so I went back to the university, and after a long time of study I became a paleontologist. The bones I study—like your little mastodon chip, Caroline—have no colors. We don't have any way to know what color the great beasts were. Maybe the mastodon was pink? Yellow?"

  Caroline giggled, picturing a Walt Disney version of the mastodon. "Blue with yellow polka dots?" she suggested.

  "Perhaps," said Gregor Keretsky. "We will never know. And this is my story: why I have no family, Stacy; why I am a paleontologist instead of a painter; and why, even, I have a funny pair of socks. You see it is a story with a happy ending, even though there are sad parts to it."

  "Maybe all of our stories are similar," suggested Joanna Tate. "I always wanted to be a poet. Instead, I'm a bank teller. I would never have been a great poet—"

  "You're a good poet, Mom," said Caroline defensively.

  Her mother laughed. "Well, I'm a better bank teller. And who knows? Maybe someday I'll be a bank president!"

  "I never wanted to be anything but a paleontologist," said Caroline. "And I will be a paleontologist, I'm sure of it."

  "I'm sure of it, too," said Gregor Keretsky.

  "And me," said Stacy from her side of the table, "I've always wanted to be an investigative journalist. I will be, too: the best one in the whole world!"

  "Good for you, Stacy," said Gregor Keretsky. "And how about you, J.P.? You are sitting so quietly."

  Caroline couldn't see J.P. through the darkness—only his outline—but she could tell that his head was still in his hands. He lifted it at Mr. Keretsky's question.

  "I don't know," J.P. said gloomily. "I always thought I was an electronics expert. But right now I'm beginning to wonder."

  Frederick Fiske had been silent. She could see the outline of his tall figure, so Caroline knew that he was still there, but he hadn't said a word. Now he finally spoke.

  "I have very wet feet," he said. "No offense, Caroline; I know it was an accident. But they're beginning to get cold. Maybe it will take my mind off them if I tell you my story."

  "TATE SPILLS MILK: FISKE SPILLS BEANS," announced Stacy.

  "Right," said Frederick Fiske. "I'm going to spill the beans. I'm involved in a project, and up till now I haven't told anyone."

  Caroline edged nervously away from Frederick Fiske, closer to Gregor Keretsky. She shuddered. Outside, the growling thunder and the drenching rain continued relentlessly.

  14

  "Is there any more coffee, by any chance?" asked Frederick Fiske.

  "A little," said Joanna Tate, "but it's probably not hot, since the electricity's off. Here, I'll get you some, if you don't mind lukewarm."

  They could hear her fumble in the darkness, groping her way to the coffee pot. "Ouch," she said as she bumped into a chair. "Hope I don't miss your cup. I can barely see."

  She poured the last of the coffee into Frederick Fiske's cup and then pulled up a chair next to his. "I'm not going to try to find my way back to the other end of the table," she said. "I'm already covered with bruises."

  Frederick Fiske sipped and spoke. "As I've told your mother, I teach at Columbia. Professor of history. Not a great professor of history," he added, chuckling, "but a good one.

  "I'd been teaching there for fifteen years. Teaching the same stuff year after year, and frankly—I hope you don't mind the analogy, Gregor—it was beginning to lose its color for me. I was bored.

  "I lived up near Columbia, on Riverside Drive—by myself; I've never been married—and last year, in the evenings, when I should have been correcting papers, I found that I was jotting down notes and ideas for a novel. I've always been a great reader."

  "Me too," said Stacy.

  "Me too," said Joanna Tate.

  "Shhh," said Caroline. "I want to hear what comes next."

  "Well, this novel that was beginning to take shape in my head and in my notes had nothing at all to do with history. You'd think that with my background—I have a Ph.D. in medieval history, after all—"

  "An interesting period, the medieval," said Gregor Keretsky.

  "Not as interesting as the Mesozoic," Caroline reminded him.

  "Shhh," said J.P. "I want to hear what comes next."

  "It's very contemporary. And—this is kind of embarrassing—it's a thriller. A spy novel. It has all kinds of murder—right now I'm doing research on obscure poisons—and, of course, it includes, excuse me, sex."

  "Of course," said Stacy. "That's essential."

  "Shhh," said Gregor Keretsky. "I want to hear what comes next."

  "Well, I won't try to retell the plot, because it's so terribly convoluted. But it really seemed pretty good, at least to me. So last year I wrote up a whole outline and a couple of chapters and a synopsis of some other chapters, and I sent it all to an agent."

  "Carl Broderick," said Stacy and Caroline in unison.

  "Yes," said Frederick Fiske in a puzzled voice. "How on earth did you know that?"

  They were both silent. "Lucky guess," Caroline finally mumbled.

  "Shhh," said J.P. "Go on, Mr. Fiske. What happened?"

  "Broderick thought it was terrific. He took it to a publisher, and the publisher thought it was terrific. They gave me a contract.

  "But it was, as I said, a little embarrassing. There I was in this very academic community, which looks down its nose at popular novels. So I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. Finally it became so time-consuming that I took a year's leave of absence from Columbia, secretly rented this apartment, and holed up to finish the writing. All my colleagues think I'm in France, doing some research on the extortionate taxes in Paris in 1437."

  "Sounds boring," said J.P.

  "Shhh," said Caroline.

  "Well, that's about it. The novel's done, and I'm working on revisions—I have to have them finished by May first, so time's getting a little tight. But Broderick's already shown the manuscript to some movie people, and there's a good chance that the film rights will be sold. There's a rumor that Dustin Hoffman wants to play the lead character.

  "You know a funny thing?" Fred
erick Fiske went on. "Tonight was a big help to me."

  "You have a scene where an electronics expert short-circuits a whole house?" asked J.P.

  "One of your characters dumps a glass of milk on somebody's feet?" asked Caroline.

  "No." He laughed. "I've had this odd problem with the writing. There are some kids in the novel—they're not major characters, but I liked having them in there. But I don't have any children myself. I don't know any children; at least, I didn't until tonight. And I just couldn't make those kids in the book come to life."

  "So you killed them, right?" asked Stacy ominously.

  "No." He chuckled again. "But Carl Broderick finally said I'd have to eliminate them. I've been going through the whole book, trying to take out the kids every place they appear. It's been driving me crazy."

  "How did tonight help?" asked Caroline.

  He thought for a moment. "Well, I was thinking of kids as some kind of separate creatures, as if they were different in some way from adults. Tonight, watching you three, listening to you, I realized that there isn't any difference."

  "We're just shorter," said J.P.

  "Right. But you think and joke and react and talk like ordinary people. Now I can go back upstairs to my typewriter and, with any luck and some hard work and long hours, rewrite those kids so they'll be real."

  "Not if it's an electric typewriter, you can't," said J.P. in a discouraged voice. "We may never have juice in this building again."

  Just then the lights came on. Everybody blinked.

  Caroline blinked twice, after she had looked around the table. Next to her was Gregor Keretsky, relaxed and smiling, with his hand still cupped around hers. At the end of the table was Frederick Fiske, and beside him was her mother—and they were holding hands.

  Across the table were Stacy and J.P., and both of them moved their hands quickly. Stacy began smoothing her hair, and J.P. folded his napkin, something he had never done before in his entire life. Caroline was almost positive that they, too, had been holding hands in the darkness.

  I am going to have to have a very, very serious talk with Stacy Baurichter, thought Caroline.

  From the hallway, Jason Carruthers called through the door. "I was able to do a temporary repair job," he said. "And the electricians are coming in the morning."

  Stacy looked at her watch. "I have to go," she said. "It's past nine, and it's a school night. But listen, Mr. Fiske, before I go: Do you know the name Harrison Ledyard?"

  "Of course," said Frederick Fiske. "He won a Pulitzer Prize last year."

  "Well," said Stacy in a voice that Caroline recognized as her fake-sophisticated voice, "I was doing a journalism piece about him. But frankly, he was such a bore that I just dropped the whole idea. Maybe you noticed that People magazine ran an article last week on Harrison Ledyard?"

  "Yes, I did see it, as a matter of fact," said Frederick Fiske with interest.

  "My good friend at People magazine, Michael Small, took on the project after I decided that it was excruciatingly boring. But when your book comes out, and when Dustin Hoffman gets involved, well, I wonder if you and I could arrange a convenient time for an interview?"

  Frederick Fiske grinned. "I'd be honored, Stacy," he said.

  "Stacy," said J.P., "I'll go down with you and get you a taxi."

  "How about you, Gregor?" asked Joanna Tate. "Do you need a taxi, too?"

  "Oh, no," said Gregor Keretsky. "I live only a few short blocks away, down near the museum. I will walk. I don't mind the rain."

  "I can loan you an umbrella," said Joanna Tate dubiously. "But the sidewalks and gutters are going to be flooded." She smiled. "I'd hate to see you ruin that extraordinary pair of socks."

  "Wet socks aren't so bad," said Frederick Fiske, standing up gingerly, with a squishing sound.

  Caroline blushed. "I'm sorry about the milk," she said. "I'm sorry about everything."

  Joanna Tate stood up, too. She was looking thoughtfully at Gregor Keretsky's feet. "I just thought of something," she said, and started across the living room. "I used to know this revolting man who was a Scrabble champion. He knew every two-letter word in the dictionary. You couldn't have a conversation with him. He was always muttering, 'Ai, ay, ex, ax, eh, en.' I haven't seen him in months. But he left these here, and I'm sure he'll never be back for them. If they fit—" She headed for the closet.

  Oh no, thought Caroline. Please, no.

  "MOM," she said loudly, "DO NOT DO WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO."

  Her mother grinned affectionately at her. "The one hundredth thing I love about you, Caroline," she said, "is that sometimes you're completely incomprehensible."

  She opened the closet door. "Whew," she said, making a face, "it smells awful in here. I wonder why. Here you go, Gregor—" She reached behind the vacuum cleaner into the dark corner where the galoshes were.

  And the rest is too horrible to tell. Horrible horrible horrible.