Little Little (7 page)

Mr. Palmer got this lopsided smile on his face and said, “Sydney, all the waiters are busy. Why don’t you go over to the hatcheck girl and get some matches for the lady?”

“Oh, I can wait for the waiter,” the woman said.

“He’ll be glad to get you some,” Mr. Palmer said. “Sydney?”

I knew he was setting me up. I could feel my face get red.

“Please, Sydney?” Mr. Palmer gave me a wink.

Okay, so I gave in, got down off the crate, and started away from the table.

I heard the woman exclaim, “Oh my! I never—” and Mr. Palmer chuckle and tell her, “You didn’t want to miss that, did you?”

When I brought the matches back to the table, the woman leaned down and accepted a light. “Well, this takes the cake!” she said, all smiles and purring. “He’s just as adorable as he can be!”

“He’s my new television star,” said Mr. Palmer. “I’m Albert Palmer. Palmer Pest Control.”

“Isn’t he something,” she said.

“Give her your line, Sydney,” said Mr. Palmer.

I said, “My what?”

“Your line,” he said. He laughed and reached down and pinched my cheek. “This little fellow plays a certain little insect which shall remain nameless in this fine restaurant. After a cloud of Palmer Pest Control repellent he says—go ahead, Sydney.”

“You’ll be the death of me,” I said.

Mr. Palmer laughed harder and the woman clapped her hands together with delight.

“Well,
you”
—she finally talked directly to me, instead of calling me “he”—“are as cute as a bug in a rug!”

“Speaking of bugs in rugs,” Mr. Palmer said, reaching for his business card from the pocket inside his jacket, then winding up like a pitcher about to throw a ball, “my card!” slapping it down on the table.

The woman let it sit there and reached out for me with her long arm, hooking me in toward her.

“Speaking of adorable little bugs in rugs,” she crooned, and leaned down in a halo of perfume to plant a wet kiss on my cheek.

Mr. Palmer chuckled. “I bet that’s the first time you ever kissed a roach!”

So much for show business.

W
HEN I GOT BACK
from Stardustburger, Cowboy was sitting on the floor in our solarium, next to Mock Hiroyuki, helping my mother make out place cards for my birthday banquet.

Mock Hiroyuki has thick black hair, as straight as Cowboy’s is tangled, and he is much shorter than my sister. He always sits so close to her he seems like a tiny kangaroo who has tumbled out of his mother’s pouch and is clinging as close as possible to her.

Because his
l’
s come out like
r
’s, he says “harro.”

He said, “Harro, Riddre Riddre.”

My mother, with her thing about certain words, tried for the longest time to do something about the way the word “sit” came out of Mock Hiroyuki’s mouth. The Japanese have no
si
sound;
si
becomes
shi.

“Then just avoid the word ‘sit’ altogether, Mock,” my mother finally suggested. “Just say I’ll take a chair over there.”

“You can say I’ll be seated,” my father said.

“Or, I’d like to get a load off my feet,” said my mother.

“How about I’d like to park my carcass?” said my father.

On and on.

My mother was complaining that “with all these place cards to print out, I haven’t even had time to see if my poem was printed in today’s paper. Did you pick up a copy of
The Examiner,
Little Little?”

I told her there was a copy in the hall.

“And where have you been?” she said. “Driving around in your car, as usual. Oh, honey, you can’t live in that car!”

“I don’t.”

“You do, and I know
why
you do, but Daddy didn’t get you that car for you to hide in!”

Cowboy said in an aside to Mock Hiroyuki, “When she’s in the car, nobody knows if she’s big or little.”

“Ah, so desu-ka,”
he answered. It is the Japanese equivalent of “you don’t say,” and he says it every other sentence.

“Everybody in this town knows me anyway, Cowboy,” I said. “I just happen to like to drive around.”

“Well, Daddy didn’t get that car for you to drive around in”—my mother.

“Is she supposed to fly it?” Cowboy asked.

“She is supposed to eat breakfast with the family,” my mother said.

“And help us with these place cards,” Cowboy said. “It’s your birthday banquet, Riddre Riddre.”

“You say Riddre Riddre,” Mock Hiroyuki exclaimed and slapped his palm across his mouth and kicked his legs, giggling.

My mother sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling and back.

She said, “There’s a letter for you on the hall table, Little Little.”

“From Little Lion,” Cowboy said.

My mother said, “Go get the letter, sweetheart, and when you come back bring
The Examiner
with you so I can see if my poem’s in it.”

All through our house are little stools my mother calls “Belle’s
sgabellos”
to help me reach things.

There is one in every room, all different and color coordinated to match the decor, some plain wood, one with a needlepoint cover, the kitchen one with chrome legs and a rubber top.

As I got up on the walnut stool in the hall, to reach Little Lion’s letter, a cold chill went through me, imagining myself married to him. My father always said to take my time, and to remember that I didn’t have to marry at all, which would start my mother off on a long harangue. “Of course you don’t
have
to marry, sweetheart, no one ever said you
had
to do anything. But keep your eyes open for the right one, because it isn’t easy, darling, in your situation. The best ones get snapped up right away. I remember when that dear little Blessing girl from Cleveland took her time deciding whether or not to marry that dear little Tompkins boy who was studying to be a doctor, and before she knew it he turned around and married what’s-her-name who won the TADpole chess tournament every year, remember?”

“Mitzi Blessing isn’t sorry she didn’t marry Willard Tompkins,” I said. “She’s a teacher now.”

“She isn’t married, though,” said my mother. “She’s still living at home, and she’s in her twenties now. A doctor doesn’t come along every day of the week in TADpoles, not a medical doctor!”

“Mitzi Blessing could care less,” I said.

“Well, her poor mother lies awake nights worrying about her, and I know that for a fact!”

“That’s
her
problem,” said my father.

“All we’re talking about here is a happy life,” said my mother. “A rich, full, happy life, which you are entitled to, Little Little, the same as anyone else.”

“No one’s saying you have to be married to be happy,” said my father.

“But,”
said my mother, “you’ll never convince me that Mitzi Blessing is happy teaching school period. There’s more to life than that. There’s children, your own home.”

On and on.

Little Lion’s letter was four pages long, typewritten front and back, with this P.S.:

Your grandfather suspects I’m going to talk to your father at your birthday banquet. I think that’s the reason he’s arranged to have me address his congregation while I’m in La Belle (so your father can see me in action). He also wondered if I’d like to speak at Twin Oaks in Wilton, where they have a special junior school for the physically exceptional. (I can’t make that, though.) He said at one time you wanted to go there as a day student, commuting from La Belle. There’s so much I don’t know about you, Little Little, so much I’m eager to learn about my love!

“I don’t want you taking a bus all the way to a school like that,” my mother used to argue whenever the subject of Twin Oaks came up. “A school like that is for children whose parents don’t want them.”

“Don’t
love
them,” my father said.

“Don’t realize they have to live in the real world, Little Little.”

“A school like that one at Twin Oaks is where parents send children they don’t know how to deal with,” said my father. “Most of the children in that school
live
there.”

“Maybe they like living there,” I said. “Maybe those kids want out.”

“Out of what?” my mother said.

“Out of the real world?” my father said.

“Why not?” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“There’s no way out of the real world,” my mother said.

My father said, “It’s there, Little Little.”

“Not in that school.”

“I don’t even like the description of that school,” said my mother.
“For the physically exceptional.
Something about that description doesn’t sit right with me. Two-headed people could go to that school.”

“Two heads are better than one,” I said.

“Little Little, this is a serious subject!” said my mother. “Most of the children in that place have been dumped there! Now, that’s a strong word, but I think that’s the only word for most of the children in that school. I don’t want you spending your days in a depressing environment!”

One afternoon, my father and mother and I drove to Wilton for a tour of the school, which was a separate part of Twin Oaks.

“I just can’t see you going there, sweetheart,” my mother said all the way back in the car.

“It’s not that it’s a bad place,” said my father.

“It’s a nice enough place, but, sweetheart, some of those poor little things are so sad!”

“Don’t call people ‘things,’” said my father.

I said, “Don’t you think people in La Belle think I’m a poor little thing?”

“No, I don’t think people in La Belle think you’re a poor little thing!” said my mother. “I’d like to meet anyone who thinks you’re a poor little thing!”

“The point is, Little Little,” said my father, “it’s not the real world.”

“The real world isn’t real to me, anyway,” I said. “What’s real about a world where you can’t reach the handles of doors?”

“Sweetheart, what door handles can’t you reach that you really have to reach?”

“We’re not talking about door handles,” said my father. “We’re talking about this school. Now, I frankly feel this school could be depressing, as your mother’s pointed out. Some of those youngsters there are too physically exceptional.”

“Not p.f. enough,” my mother said.

“I’m tired of p.f.,” I said. “I’m not p.f.”

“You are so p.f.,” said my mother. “You’re little but you’re p.f.”

“There was a boy there on a board,” my father said. “That’s what we mean, Little Little.”

“If you don’t like going to school in La Belle,” my mother said, “pick out any regular boarding school in the country, cost is no consideration, and go
there!”

“And have my classmates’ parents drive off saying, ‘Did you see that poor little dwarf? It’s a nice enough place but that dwarf could be depressing.’”

“In the first place you are not a dwarf,” my mother said, “and in the second place little people who are p.f. don’t depress anyone! They don’t!”

“I’m not for the boarding school idea at all,” my father said.

“Well, you won’t let go!” said my mother. “Even if it’s for her own good, you won’t let go.”

“She doesn’t want to go to boarding school,” my father said.

“She’s never thought about it,” my mother said.

“Why should she?”—my father.

There was always a point in these conversations when I began to be referred to as “she” or “her,” as though I wasn’t there in person, but very much there as their permanent, unsolvable problem.

If Cowboy was a cat she would carry Mock Hiroyuki like a kitten, by his neck, she was so protective of him.

When he announced he had to go home to get ready for the game that afternoon, Cowboy walked him up to Lake Road, to wait while he thumbed a ride.

Mock Hiroyuki is the closest Cowboy has ever come to playing with a doll, and their relationship made my family nervous.

When I went back to the solarium, even though Cowboy and Mock were at least a half a mile from the house, my mother whispered to me, “What is it she
sees
in that boy?”

She was sitting in the white wicker chair, thumbing through the newspaper. “How can she spend so much time with him?”

“Maybe the Hiroyukis wonder how he can spend so much time with Cowboy.”

“According to your father, the Hiroyukis are too busy trying to set up something called a pachinko parlor downtown, a place full of pinball machines. Now, that’s all this town needs!”

“This town is like me trying to pretend I’m tall,” I said. “Why doesn’t it just face the fact it’s different?”

“And let pinball machines in right in the downtown?” my mother said. “Would you like to live in a town with a Japanese pinball machine parlor right across from The Soda Shoppe? I wouldn’t.”

Then she started in on the Hiroyukis, on a trap plant being one thing and a pachinko parlor being quite another, on give some people an inch and they take a mile, and the next thing you know there’s a sukiyaki restaurant next to the pachinko parlor, and after that the geisha girls arrive.

I went and sat in my white wicker rocking chair, which is my size and has white duck pillows tied to it and faces the white duck couch where my mother moved to, to spread out the newspaper, rambling on about what the Japanese wanted to do to La Belle.

Once Cowboy and I found all the love letters my mother and father had written to each other. My father signed all of his “Always and all ways, Larry,” and she enclosed poems she wrote in hers. One was called “Larry, Our Love Is Sputnik.”
(Launched the same night / Reaching for outer space and finding itself a baby moon / A satellite of earth / Where other lovers wait and / Play it safe and never / Dance with stars.)

Cowboy and I had gotten out the World Almanac to look up the date the Russians launched Sputnik, which was
before
my mother and father got married.

I often looked at my mother and tried to imagine her swept off her feet by any emotion. But I couldn’t, any more than I could imagine her when she was my age and planning to be a famous poet.

In one letter my father wrote,
You’ll be the brilliant lawyer’s wife and I’ll be the brilliant poetess’s husband. Oh, Ava, my life
—
what a life we’ll have!