My One Hundred Adventures

by Polly Horvath

  My mother passes me a bowl of strawberries.

  “Enjoy them,” she says. “They’re the last of the season.”

  The Poetry Reading

  My Fourth Adventure

  The Raspberries Are Ripe

  For five days nothing happens except summer. My adventures must be over because I have gotten my balloon ride and that is the bargain I have struck. But one morning a girl I don’t know comes over and I think hopefully that this may be my next adventure beginning. She tells me she is a page at the library. This throws me for a second. I am thinking of all those book pages. Then I realize that it is a job title. She has a note for my mother. My mother has been out fishing from the pier on the lake all morning because last night we had chicken and rice for dinner without the chicken. I take the note and sit on the porch waiting for her. We have never gotten a hand-delivered note from the library before and I want to know what it says but it is sealed.

  Finally my mother comes home with a small bucket of perch and sits down next to me. “The raspberries are ripe,” she says. She holds out a small cupful she has picked and we eat them together. She smells earthy from digging worms and when she opens her letter, she wipes a tendril of hair off her forehead and out of her eyes in order to read, leaving a dirty smudge.

  “Well!” she says when she is done reading, and folds the note up again. She stares into space for a couple of minutes. Then she remembers I am there and hands it to me.

  It is from Mrs. Stewart, the librarian, saying they are having a poetry reading at the library tonight and three poets were to read but one has had to cancel. The others are H. K. Thomson and Cassandra Lark. The library is offering my mother a hundred dollars to come and read her poetry as the replacement. I know she hates doing this. She doesn’t like being the center of attention. She says it gives her the willies.

  “Are you going to do it?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says my mother, sighing and getting up. “I’d better go prepare something. Could you take a note back to the library for me?”

  She writes out an acceptance and as much as I know she doesn’t want to do it I am glad because it has been five long days since the balloon ride and I am bored. I have reneged on my promise to God. I want my other ninety-seven adventures. I pray for them with renewed vigor.

  I run across the sand barefoot and sit on a cement divider as I put on my sandals. People are piling out of cars to go down to the beach. I don’t know any of them. A lot of them are probably tourists. They probably see our house and think how lucky we are.

  I am walking past Dr. Callahan’s office, which is next to the library, when I trip over one of the Gourd children. “Hey, watch it!” snaps Mrs. Gourd. She is coming down the doctor’s steps with a baby carrier. There are little Gourds everywhere. The one I tripped over is crying so I put him back on his feet. Dr. Callahan waves at me from the top of the steps.

  “Jane Fielding, look at you go!” he calls down. “Tripping over children! Dropping Bibles out of balloons like missiles. When you kids in town start growing up and sowing your wild oats, why, you really sow them, now, don’t you? You’d better be careful, Mrs. Gourd might sue next time!” He goes back inside.

  Mrs. Gourd stands stock-still. She is thinking. Her eyes kind of roll when she does this. It is not the normal way a person thinks. It seems to require more mechanical effort. As if her eyes are needed to crank her brain into gear and keep it running. “You were dropping Bibles out of balloons like missiles? You’re that hot-air-balloon girl.”

  “Why?” I ask. I really would like to forget the whole thing but she whips off the baby blanket that is covering the baby carrier and I gasp. There is a large purple lump on the top of the baby Gourd’s head.

  “That’s why,” she says grimly, and stares at me.

  I just look at the bump dumbly for a minute while the little Gourd I tripped over wails.

  “Well?” she demands finally.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, but my mouth is dry even before my mind can form thoughts.

  “I’ll tell you what I mean, missy. I was walking with these children and one of them Bibles you was slinging out of that contraption hit my baby on the head and may have scarred him for life! That’s what. He may never have no normal intelligence now.”

  “NO!” I say as the full implication of Dr. Callahan’s words and what I have done comes over me. “NO!”

  “Yes indeed. Now, just what’re you planning on doing about that?”

  One of the library clerks runs down the steps. “Hi, Jane, I hope your mom can read at the event tonight!” she calls to me as she dashes off. “I love her poetry!”

  Mrs. Gourd’s eyes go to the posters on the library door and windows about tonight’s big poetry reading. “Which one is your mother?”

  “My mother’s Felicity Fielding but her name isn’t on the poster because she is just substituting,” I explain. Didn’t I look down when I dropped the Bibles? Am I crazy? Didn’t it occur to me I might hit someone?

  “Well, well. I guess I better just show up at this reading and see what she plans to do about her daughter maiming innocent babies. It’s like the doctor said, I could sue, you know!”

  I don’t say anything and now she starts to smile and nod to herself in a satisfied manner. “Must be nice to be so rich that all you gotta do is write poetry all day. I gotta go make supper for Mr. Gourd right now but I’ll be talking to your mama later and we’ll just see about sharing some of that wealth.”

  Mr. Gourd is our school janitor and he scares me. He creeps around the hall with his mop and pail and a half-smoked cigarette always dangling from his lips. There are rumors that he has come to school drunk, that he has hit children, locked them in closets. I don’t really believe these rumors but I don’t want anything to do with him. Suppose my mother says no to Mrs. Gourd and Mr. Gourd comes to our house to try to talk to my mother. It will scare Max and Hershel and terrify Maya.

  I think of last night and the bloodred sea. All has not ended well after all. I know what Nellie will say when she finds out. “I’m going straight to hell,” I say, thinking aloud.

  “You’re going straight to jail first!” says Mrs. Gourd indignantly as if I have tried to skip a step. She gathers up her children and leaves.

  I look around. It has been as if everything, even time itself, had stopped during this debacle and now it has reset itself; people are once more walking by on their way to their various errands, their lives exactly where they left them when my life came to a crashing halt. For me things will never be the same. I have maybe injured a baby so seriously it will change his life and the life of his family forever. But overriding this is the terrible fear of my mother finding out, of her ruination on top of my own. I cannot let her find out about any of this.

  Because I am thinking of my mother I make my way home, forgetting about the note, and when I get there, find it clutched in my hand, all sweaty and crumpled, and have to go back to the library, desperately aware of how little time I have left to come up with a plan.

  Yesterday I was so full of hope. My life seemed blessed, full of adventures and answered prayers, and now something very, very bad has happened and it will never be the same again. And it all happened because I was greedy. Because I couldn’t have an ordinary life. Because I was so taken with the wonders of the world that I could not be content with anything less than the constant awareness of its miracles. And you cannot have that in your basic nine-to-three schooltime routine, even with the best of teachers. Even with books to read. Even with the sound of the ocean every night. You need more.

  “So,” says Mrs. Stewart when I hand her my note. “She’s saying yes for a change, is she?”

  “Yes,” I say breathlessly because my mind is racing ahead to my dim future. If we cannot pay what Mrs. Gourd wants, will I really be sent to jail? I see myself in a plain, round underground cement cell in which water drips on my head no matter where I stand and cockroaches are the size of birds and water bugs are the s
ize of cats. But I have to eat them because they have forgotten my gruel tray again. And then for a change of pace I go to hell.

  Mrs. Stewart makes a face that is kind of a sneer and kind of triumphant. “Well, I guess she sees she has to do this sort of thing now and then,” she says, making another mean face. I don’t know why she is so mad at my mother. “I’ll put her on in the middle between Cassandra and H.K. They’re both experienced at this sort of thing. Tell your mother we’ll need about twenty minutes is all. If she’s got it. I’ll give H.K. and Cassandra the bulk of the evening as that’s who people are coming to see.”

  I nod and head home. For a moment I formulate a plan to tell my mother that the library has changed its mind and she needn’t do the reading. But she will just find out I lied and Mrs. Gourd will track us down at home. Besides, now we need every penny to pay her off.

  When I get in I tell my mother that Mrs. Stewart said she needs twenty minutes.

  “Goodness, is that all? Thank heavens,” my mother says. “Can you watch Maya and Max and Hershel for me if I bring them along?”

  I nod.

  “Are you feeling well, Jane?”

  I nod again. She looks at me searchingly as if to discover what has besieged me and fix it but all she can think to say is “Maybe Ginny would like to come with us?”

  For the first time since I talked to Mrs. Gourd I feel a stab of relief. Ginny is smart and clearheaded and practical. But even more important, she is always on my side. She already knows what she wants to do with her life. She is going to be a dress designer in New York City. She has it all thought out. If anyone can help me come up with a plan to circumvent Mrs. Gourd, it is Ginny.

  My mother sees how happy this thought has made me and she says, “Well, for heaven’s sakes. Run and get her now. She can have dinner with us.”

  I run across the sand to the development where Ginny lives. I weave my way through the new roads with their black asphalt and crisp sidewalks edged by fresh-cut grass. Ginny’s house is neat. The garage is large and in front of the house and gapes at you. Our house stands guard over us but Ginny’s feels like a soft plush monster that swallows you into the comfort of its great carpeted maw. Everything is so soft you do not even know you have been divided from all that is alive. You cannot feel the wind or cold or damp. There are no hard surfaces or sharp sounds. There is no danger here. Streetlights outside her window keep light always around, inside and out. This artificial light pretends that here there is only safety and life, but this light itself is a kind of death. It is death to the deep night.

  Ginny answers the door. Her mother and father are at work. She takes me up to her room. The walls are slick with shiny wallpaper. She has bunk beds. I always thought I would sleep in one if I slept over but I have never been invited. Ginny has never said so but I think her mother is somehow suspicious of my family and the way we live on the beach.

  I begin to feel that I cannot breathe. I feel caged. The soft, quieting carpeting makes me crazy for the sound of the sea.

  “Can you come to my house for supper? Can you leave your mother a note?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Ginny asks, but I cannot talk in this smothering place.

  She writes a note to her mother and we run until we are someplace where I can see the wind moving the trees. Where I feel the universe at work again. Then I sit and tell Ginny everything that has happened.

  “Oh no,” she says, putting her hand to her mouth in horror. This is why I like Ginny. She does not try to talk you out of the gravity of the situation.

  She does not remove her hand from her mouth but says through it, “You’ve been busy since I last talked to you.” It is inestimably comforting to have a friend, someone who is not horrified at you but with you.

  “It’s all so terrible and it all started because Mrs. Parks had a thrombosis and it wasn’t interesting like Mrs. Nasters’s cancer.”

  “Mrs. Nasters has cancer?” asks Ginny. In the midst of so much horror, it is good to catch up. I have been in such crazy places alone in my head the last few days and our ordinary, familiar talk helps to steady me. Mrs. Nasters lives next door to Ginny but no one has told Ginny about the cancer. Ginny’s parents never tell her anything they think might be upsetting for children. I explain how taking Mrs. Parks’s side prayerwise led to a series of events that begat my downfall.

  “Everyone is always telling us to make good choices,” says Ginny. “But how can you know what a good choice is until you see the results and when so much can go wrong from just one unthinking thing?”

  I start to say something but am interrupted.

  “She could take your house!” says Ginny. She knows how important our house is.

  This has not occurred to me and now I begin to shake.

  “All right, all right, calm down. She wants your mother to make an offer but we can’t let your mother know anything, I agree.” She puts a steadying hand on my forearm. “We have to make an offer first and we have to make it before Mrs. Gourd gets to your mother tonight.”

  My mother seems outwardly calm at dinner. She does everything the same, puts dishes on the table and talks to us as normal and looks out in her usual stillness at the waves. When Horace comes barking over and races around under the picnic table begging food, she just picks him up and holds him on her lap, stroking him gently and suggesting that he won’t much like what we’re eating, otherwise we’d share, until Mrs. Spinnaker comes and roughly grabs him out of her hands. Then instead of striding purposefully off as usual, Mrs. Spinnaker turns and eyes my mother speculatively and says, “I hear you’re going to do a reading at the library tonight. That’s you, isn’t it, Felicia Fielding? I saw your name inked over someone else’s on the library poster.” It always seems strange to hear my mother’s whole name. The name on her books.

  “Yes,” says my mother.

  “Humph,” says Mrs. Spinnaker. “Taken up a little writing, have you? Well, we all have our hobbies. I do crosswords.”

  It’s hard to know how to respond to this. She’s got that poor dog like a football under her arm and it looks to me as if she’s crushing him but he has a resigned expression on his face as if he’s used to it and knows if he keeps quiet he will eventually be set down.

  “Here, let me get you one of my books,” says my mother, slipping out from the picnic table and going into the house, but Mrs. Spinnaker ambles back to her cottage, talking to Horace all the way.

  My mother doesn’t come back out with the poetry book and when Ginny and I go inside is washing the dishes. “I saw her leaving from the kitchen window,” she says in explanation, shaking her head and smiling. “I wonder if she is coming to the reading.”

  “Do you want her to?” I ask.

  “I don’t like anyone I know to be there,” says my mother.

  “Except us children, right?” I say.

  “Especially not anyone who knows me well. But, of course, H.K. will already be there so you children may as well be too.”

  I wait for her to explain what she means but she doesn’t, she just goes on dreamily washing pans and gazing out at the wish-wash swish-swash of the waves. I wonder if she has lost track of her hands in the dishwater and thinks they are swimming in their own frothy sea but Ginny has another idea. She pulls me into my bedroom and whispers, “What does she mean H.K. knew her well? What does a woman mean when she says a man knew her well? It means he was her boyfriend, right?”

  “Oh!” I say, and suddenly remember to tell her about the clothes hanger man.

  “Are you sure she used the words ‘your father’?” Ginny asks when I’m done.

  “How could I have misunderstood? I was standing right next to her.”

  “She didn’t say Oh, what a bother? Or Well, yes, but I’d rather? Or Yes, so I gather?”

  I scan back but I cannot think. Too much has happened since then.

  “And how could H.K. have been a boyfriend without you seeing him around? Did you ever see any men around?”
<
br />   “No,” I say.

  “And yet there must have been.”

  “Stop it!” I say, and am surprised by the vehemence in my voice.

  So is Ginny. “Well, anyhow, I think you heard wrong about this clothes hanger man. If your mother were to tell you, she would never say it so casually.”

  But it is exactly the type of thing my mother would do. I know Ginny doesn’t understand. No one really understands a family but the people in it and even they each understand it differently.

  My mother calls that it is time to leave. Only when we arrive at the library does she begin to look nervous. One hand shakes slightly as she picks up a flyer about the reading. It talks mainly about H.K. and his workshops at colleges and his grants and awards. My mother has won a Pulitzer but it doesn’t mention this. Only that she is replacing the third poet, who couldn’t come.

  “Why don’t they mention your Pulitzer?” I ask.

  “Maybe because it was so long ago,” says my mother. “Maybe because it makes them angry that I usually say no to readings. They think I’m snotty, maybe. It doesn’t matter, Jane.” She leaves us to sit at the front.

  Ginny and I have Maya and Hershel and Max in the back and things are about to start. My mother has put a stack of picture books by them and seated us where they can play on the floor with the tiny toy trucks she brought for Hershel and Max. Maya has her paper dolls. I think the trucks are a mistake. Max and Hershel like to make vroom vroom sounds when the trucks go. I tell them they will have to stop that when the readings begin but I know they will forget. I keep looking for Mrs. Gourd but she isn’t there.

  I am beginning to think it will all be okay after all, when Ginny leaps up. She points out the big picture windows that form one wall of the library. “There she is!” she croaks hoarsely in my ear, and goes racing outside, where Mrs. Gourd, surrounded by little Gourds and holding the baby carrier, is talking to an assistant librarian on the front steps. Through the window I see Ginny pretending to kneel and tie her shoe. Then the assistant librarian goes inside and Ginny grabs Mrs. Gourd and begins talking to her. I am amazed at how bold Ginny can be with grown-ups. I am relieved that she might talk Mrs. Gourd out of suing.