Downtown

by Norma Fox Mazer

  In the kitchen, I sat down across from Gene and heaped eggs on my plate. He asked me some stuff about school and if I wanted to go out to dinner with him and Martha, and then he started talking about Charley’s Aunt, the play he was in.

  “I don’t know about the director on this play we’re doing. This is her first play—”

  “Uh uh uh, watch that sexist stuff, or I’ll have to sic Drew’s girl friend on you.”

  “What I want you to do is come to a rehearsal in a week or so, Pete, and tell me how my character is shaping up.”

  “I get the chance to criticize you legitimately?”

  “My character, not me, wise guy. Brassett’s the quintessential English serving man—extremely polite and extremely shrewd. It’s that shrewdness I want to get across.”

  I mopped up the eggs with a piece of toast. “Okay if I bring a friend with me?” Instant flash: Cary sitting next to me in the darkened theater, head close to mine, saying respectfully, Does your uncle always ask your advice? “Drew?” Gene said. “Sure.”

  “Not Drew. It’s, um, it’s a girl. No funny remarks, please.”

  “Is that who you were on the phone with last night? I sort of caught that it wasn’t Drew.”

  “We’re going on a bike ride, Sunday. That is, if I get her parents’ seal of approval. They’re looking me over before they let her out with me. Her parents are mucho strict. I have a feeling if I pass inspection they’re going to slap a hunk of red wax on my forehead. ‘Certified Harmless.’”

  In the living room the grandfather clock struck the half hour. “How old is this girl?”

  “Her name’s Cary. Almost seventeen. As a sort of parent, you want to give me any good advice on how to impress her parents with how trustworthy and upstanding I am?”

  “‘To thine own self be true.’”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  “Hmmm. Okay, be polite, try to understand their point of view, and smile. There’s nothing like a smile.”

  “You really think so?” I bared my teeth at my uncle. “What if they ask me about Laura and Hal?”

  “Why would they? Anyway, you know what to say.”

  I dumped my dishes into the sink and followed him out to the hall. “I’m not exactly your normal all-American kid, am I? Sometimes I get the feeling it shows. Like pimples. Even if you tell yourself to act like you don’t have them, everybody else can see the ugly little brutes.”

  “Pete, calm down. Just go see your girl friend and put all that other stuff out of your mind.”

  “Stuff? You mean Laura and Hal? My parents? Is that what you do? Just wipe them out of the old mind? Blank them out as if they didn’t exist? That’s just great. That’s really great!” I was suddenly shouting.

  Gene looked at me for a moment, then put on his jacket and went out the door. I stood there, breathing hard. What the hell was the matter with me? I ran after my uncle. “Gene!” I caught him on the street. “Forget I did that, will you? The maniac in me—” I held out my hands. “I’m sorry.”

  On Sunday, on the way to Cary’s house, the gears on my bike were slipping and I had to stop several times to adjust them. Even so, I was there too early. I rode past the house. Was Cary watching from the window? I bent forward over the handlebars, wishing I had a helmet with a chin strap. I rode around the block five or six times, checking my watch every other minute. At exactly two o’clock, I was on the porch, ringing the bell.

  Cary answered the door. “Hi.” She looked different again, I guess because of her hair—it was pulled back into a ponytail. And this was the first time I’d seen her in shorts.

  I followed her into the house, suddenly nervous and trying to remember Gene’s advice. In the living room she said, “Sit down, Pete, I’ll get Mom and Dad.” I perched on the edge of an upholstered chair. Not for anything would I have sat back and messed up the cushion. Everything in that room was perfect. Not a thing out of place. The magazines on the coffee table were stacked with their edges ruler-straight, the couch was fat and smooth—had anything as vulgar as a behind ever been on it?—and even the curtains at the windows billowed out as stiffly as if they were at attention. Martha said that for two guys, Gene and I kept ourselves in a very civilized manner, but compared to this house, we lived like a couple of slobs.

  A little girl in overalls, carrying a tin robot, wandered in. We looked at each other. I tried to think of something to say to her. I didn’t know anything about kids. She started the conversation. “Zoooom, zoooom, zoooom.”

  “Zoooom, zoooom, zoooom,” I agreed. She ran the robot lightly over the arm of the couch and gazed at me with round blue eyes. A moment later, Cary came in with her father and her mother, who was holding a baby over her shoulder. I jumped up and Cary introduced us.

  “Pete.” Her father was short with broad shoulders. He gave me a handshake I wasn’t going to forget soon. “Right on time,” he said, giving me another powerful hand squeeze.

  “How’s the weather outside?” Cary’s mother said. She was the woman with bangs and glasses who’d tapped on the window, the one I’d thought was Cary’s older sister. Her father didn’t exactly look young enough to be Cary’s brother, but he didn’t look that old either. He had the same blue eyes as the little girl with the robot.

  “Pretty baby, Mrs. Longstreet.” I remembered my uncle’s advice to be polite and smile a lot.

  “Yancey,” she said.

  “Oh! Sorry.” I should have remembered how they answered the phone. I puzzled again over the two names and decided, looking from Mr. Yancey to Cary, that maybe he was her stepfather. She certainly looked more like Mrs. Yancey; they both had brown eyes.

  “Well,” Mr. Yancey said, “what’s this about a bike ride? Where do you plan to go? How long will it take?”

  Cary’s mother sat down on the couch. Mr. Yancey picked up the little girl in overalls and sat down too. “I don’t know about your family,” he said, “but in our house we have rules that we expect Cary to follow. No exceptions.”

  I nodded, trying to look like I really understood their point of view.

  “Where do you live, Peter?” Mrs. Yancey said.

  “Mooreland Avenue.”

  “Mooreland? Isn’t that downtown?” Mr. Yancey said. “Or is there another Mooreland Avenue?”

  “No, it’s downtown. Off South.”

  “Well, right. I would have been surprised to hear there was a Mooreland Avenue I didn’t know about. I’ve lived and worked in Winston all my life and I know it like the back of my hand.”

  “Do you and your brothers and sisters like living downtown?” Mrs. Yancey said. “Don’t you miss having a yard?”

  “We do have a yard. Not very big, but we have a couple of trees. It’s really nice. The house is old.” That didn’t sound good. “I don’t mean old crappy—” I stopped again, realizing from Mrs. Yancey’s face that I’d goofed. Crappy was a no-no. “The house is historical,” I said quickly. “When my uncle bought it, he saved it from the wreckers.”

  Mrs. Yancey patted the baby. “Your uncle lives with your family? That’s nice.”

  I cleared my throat. “Actually, it’s just the two of us.”

  “Just you and your uncle? No sisters or brothers? How awful for you. And where are your parents?”

  “My parents—” I cleared my throat again. “Actually, they’re dead.” As always when I said this, my lips went numb.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Yancey said. “I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject. I know how it feels to be alone.” There was a short pause—for sympathy?—then Mrs. Yancey went briskly back to the subject at hand. Onward with the investigation of one Pete Greenwood. “Now what does your uncle do, Peter?”

  “You mean for a living? He’s an optometrist. Greenwood’s Optometry Center. That’s downtown too.”

  “I know the place,” Mr. Yancey said. “Years ago there was a cigar shop right there. Where do you go to school?

  “Winston High.”

&
nbsp; “On the other side of town. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Sixteen,” Mrs. Yancey repeated, with a little tuck of her mouth. “When I was sixteen, I was wild. I was a wild kid, so I know all about being sixteen.”

  She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “Ah, I try not to be too wild.” I glanced at Cary. Did I get a smile on that one?

  “I hope you realize that Cary is not interested in having a boyfriend.”

  Cary spoke for the first time. “People can be just friends, Mom. It’s not like when you were growing up.”

  Her mother brushed something off Cary’s tee-shirt. “Certain things don’t change, Cary. Boys are boys and girls are girls and that’s the way life is.”

  “Maybe, but Pete and I are just friends.”

  “I want to count on that,” Mr. Yancey said, fixing his blue eyes directly on me. “You may think we’re a little strict, Pete, but our point of view is that there’s nothing more important than watching out for our children’s welfare.”

  I nodded. Cary pulled on a white hooded sweater. “Can we take some cookies and apples?” she asked. And I realized that, whatever the test was, I must have passed.

  Sixteen

  Outside Winston, the fields were bare, but the trees were starting to show some green. About a mile up a back road, my bike made an ominous rattling noise, then I found myself pedaling and going nowhere. I kicked the bike a couple of times to let it know what I thought of its treachery.

  “What happened?” Carrie doubled back.

  “Something’s wrong with the gears. It was glitching up the whole way over to your house.”

  “Did you bring your tools?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t take mine either. What a pain.”

  “The tools, the bike, or me? Never mind, answer me this question instead. If we go out for an ice cream cone, do your parents do the Spanish Inquisition bit? Or was that special treatment for a big event like this bike ride?”

  “I don’t want you to make cracks about my parents.”

  “It was just a joke.”

  “Well, I guess I don’t like jokes like that.”

  In the distance, cows were grazing on the slopes. Cary took the food from her saddlebag. “Want something to eat while we figure out what to do with your bike?”

  “Okay with me. Do you think we should let your parents know that we’ve changed our plans?” Me and my big mouth. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  She nodded, but we sat there for quite a while without saying anything. Frowning and biting her lips, Cary folded and refolded a napkin into tiny squares, the little-girl look on her again. I began to feel exceptionally rotten, the way I did when I was mean to my uncle. “Sorry for that,” I said again. “Forget I said it?”

  She nodded and bit into an apple, but we still didn’t seem to have anything to say to each other. I lay back on the ground, just this side of depressed. Here I’d gone through all that stuff to get the Yancey Good Boy Seal of Approval—and so what? Did Cary and I actually have anything in common? Was she really different? Did I truly have a special feeling for her? And what about her? Did she have any feeling at all for me?

  A pickup truck approached, trailing a plume of dust. The driver stared at us as he passed slowly. Several guns were racked in the back window.

  “I hate guns,” Cary said.

  “Me too,” I said, glad to find something we agreed on.

  After another moment, she said, “Want a cookie?”

  “Thanks.” I tried out a smile on her. “Your mother doesn’t look much older than you.”

  “She isn’t. She’s twenty-six.”

  I laughed. “She had you when she was nine years old.”

  “I’m a foster.”

  “A foster?”

  “A foster child. Mom and Dad are my foster parents.… You don’t have to look so shocked.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s just—I’m surprised. So that’s why your name is Longstreet and theirs is—I never thought—I didn’t realize—”

  “Why should you? I don’t go around with a sign on, ‘Beware the foster child.’”

  “I never met a foster.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  “Why do you call your foster parents Mom and Dad?”

  “Because they’re my parents. Just like Kim and Jamie are my sister and brother. They’re my family just as much as your uncle is your family.”

  “Are you the only one?”

  “The only one what?”

  “The only foster in the family?”

  “At the moment, yes. Kim and Jamie are Mom and Dad’s birth kids. Anything else you want to know?”

  “Yes, actually, but I think I’m making you sort of mad—”

  “I’m not mad. Go ahead, satisfy your curiosity.”

  “No, no, I can tell you really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m ashamed?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that, Cary. It’s just that you sounded really sort of hostile. I mean, it’s interesting to me, but—”

  “I’m glad I’m such an interesting specimen.”

  “Cary! Come on! I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “No? So what exactly is so interesting about me?”

  “I didn’t mean you, per se. Your situation. For instance, I didn’t know they let people as young as Mr. and Mrs. Yancey be foster parents to teenagers.”

  “Why not, if they’re good parents?”

  I flopped over on my stomach and watched a couple of sluggish ants crawling around. After a few minutes of intensely loud silence, I said, “Hey, I’ve got another question. Do you dislike me?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, tell me straight.”

  “Would I be here with you if I disliked you?”

  “I don’t know. Would you?”

  “Do you think I’m desperate? Why would I spend an afternoon with someone I disliked? Because you’ve got short hair and pants? I am not that kind of person!”

  “I hope you do like me,” I said after a few minutes, “because I like you a lot.”

  “Do you? You don’t even know me. There are things about me—you might not be so keen to be my friend if you knew certain things.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous. Now I know you’re a foster. Is that what you mean?”

  “That’s the beginning. Anyway, I’ve had friends like you who said, ‘Oh, no, no, nothing could make me stay away from you.’ And then they changed their tune.”

  “Great friends.”

  She shrugged. “The world is full of rats and skunks and you can’t always tell just by looking.” She had an odd smile on her face, half proud, half cynical. She gave me a long look. “Can I trust you?” Another searching look. “I tend to get very strong feelings about people, very fast. Either I trust them or I don’t. And if I don’t—there’s usually a good reason, even if I don’t know it at first.”

  “Well, what about me? What’s your strong feeling about me?”

  “Oh, you’re a hard one to figure out. You come on so simple and normal—” She laughed. “I don’t know, that’s a crazy thing to say, I guess.”

  “Not so crazy. There are things about me—”

  “Yesss.” She drew out the word. “I think I should trust you, but—I hope I’m not wrong. Listen up, Pete. You want to hear my story?”

  I hesitated for an instant, wondering if the deal was her story for mine, but she’d already started talking.

  “I lived with my real mother until I was four, Pete. They were the four most wonderful, most beautiful years of my life. My mother used to read to me every night … sit me in her lap and brush my hair. Then she got sick. Too sick to take care of me and my sisters. So the county came and took us and put us each out with a different family.”

  “They couldn’t keep you together?”

  “There aren’t many families who would want three at once. I lived with the Moroscos first. I was th
ere six months and it was pretty good but for some reason they took me away from them and put me with another family. That was only for a few weeks, I hardly remember them. After that I lived with the Albrands until I was six. Then they moved away to Texas and right after I started first grade, I went to live with Papa and Mama DeAngelis. Seven years. I had seven years with them, I was their only child and they wanted to adopt me. But they were in their sixties, and the county said they were too old and sent me to another family.”

  She stopped for a moment, then went on evenly, “They sent me to the Waterstripes. I was with them for a year. And after them, I lived with the Hurleys. They thought I ate too much. Stingy people. I was always hungry there. Whenever I did something they didn’t like, they’d take away my supper or my breakfast. Sometimes I got so many demerits I didn’t eat for two or three days. So I ran away. I went to New York City. Big dirty ugly city. I was on the streets for a few days, I slept a couple of nights in the train station. I was just walking around wondering how I was going to get a meal and where I should sleep when a woman came up to me and started talking. She said she was from Father Ritter’s Covenant House and did I have a place to stay. Did you ever hear of Covenant House?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’d never heard of it. But I decided I trusted her and I went along with her. I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t much care at that point. I stayed at Covenant House for about two months. I didn’t want to come back here, until my social worker promised I wouldn’t have to live with the Hurleys. Right after I came back to Winston, I stayed in PCH—you know what that is?”

  I shook my head. I wanted to say something, but everything I thought of seemed inadequate. Rough life … you’ve had a hard time … Did she need me to tell her that?

  “Funny, you know about Covenant House, which is in New York City, but not about Pinewood Children’s Home, which is right here in Winston. Lousy place, I hate it. I stayed there for about a month until my worker found me another family. They had six other foster kids. I thought, Well, what is this? Are these people greedy or what? But I liked them. I really wanted to stay with Mom and Dad Serio—”