Nobody's Family is Going to Change (19 page)

It was hard to think about her mother at all. Something hurt inside her when she tried to think about her mother. There were things she never wanted to ask her mother. There were answers she never wanted to hear. It was one thing to think about her father hating her. She hated him too, but she never wanted to know what her mother thought of her. She'd just as soon never find out about that.

“All right,” said Mr. Sheridan. “You've finished that ice cream. You can stop looking in those bowls. You can look up here at me and tell me what all this is about.”

Willie and Emma kept looking down.

“Got that coffee ready, Mama?”

“Yes, dear.”

Mrs. Sheridan came back into the room with a mug from which steam rose. “It's past Willie's bedtime, dear.”

To hear her, thought Emma, you'd think there was nothing happening at all.

Mr. Sheridan took a sip of coffee. “Mmm, that's good, good hot strong coffee. You always did make great coffee.” He smiled at his wife and she smiled back at him.

Emma sneered. Look at that, she said to herself, look at them smiling at each other. Look at my mother, happy for a pat, like a good dog. Look at my father, thinking about coffee at a time like this, always thinking about his stomach.

“You can stop staring at your feet now, both of you.” Mr. Sheridan sounded almost cheery now. “The big bad wolf isn't going to eat you up.”

Emma groaned. She couldn't help herself.

“What's that for?” he asked. “Am I boring you again?”

Now she was in for it. She never should have uttered a sound. She decided she would make her speech on Willie's behalf, then get up and go to bed. Tomorrow she would organize a committee to come and talk to her father.

“I don't think you understand,” she began calmly, “that Willie cares a great deal about this musical and about dancing
in general. I mean that he is going to be a dancer and that nothing you can do or say is going to change that. You can't stop him. If he has to wait until he's grown, he'll still do it. I don't think you see that.”

Mr. Sheridan had obviously not seen it. He blinked his eyes. “I don't think, Emma, that you know very much about seven-year-olds. They don't always want to do what they think they want to do at seven. For instance, when you were seven, you wanted to be a shoplifter.”

Emma's eyebrows flew up. “What?”

“You sat down and told me very seriously that you had seen a shoplifter on television and that you didn't understand what was wrong with that because all those things were out there for people to take and so why was this lady arrested when she took something. Furthermore, you thought you'd be a shoplifter when you grew up, because the lady had gotten a lot of nice things.”

Emma was mortified. Her mother and father were laughing. Willie was looking up at her with sleepy, surprised eyes. She sat, her hands holding her ice-cream bowl, watching her mother and father laugh. It was not only not funny, it wasn't fair, bringing up something one had done when one was seven. She didn't think he'd proved his point, either.

“I may yet be a shoplifter,” said Emma, and stood up. She loved watching their faces fall. “I'm going to bed now and Willie is going with me.” She took Willie's hand and together they left the room and marched down the hall.
There, she thought, see how they like being talked to the way they talk to us, see how they like a taste of their own medicine.

At Willie's door, she stopped. “Willie, go to sleep. If either one of them comes in and tries to talk to you alone, then you yell for me and come into my room and get me if I'm asleep. Tomorrow I'm going to do something. You're going to keep that job, so go to sleep and don't think about anything.”

Willie smiled. “Thanks,” he said simply. “What are you going to do?”

“Don't worry. Just believe me. It's going to work out.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He went into his room. Emma walked down the hall. She could hear her mother and father muttering to each other in the living room, but she didn't even care what they were saying.

Emma lurked around the front of the luncheonette for five minutes, peering through the foggy window at Harrison Carter's Adam's apple making swift movements up and down as he drank his Coke.

She finally propelled herself through the door, feeling like the lead in a spy movie.

His greeting, a brief nod, did nothing to dispel this illusion.

“Sheridan, isn't it?” He nodded, jerking his long red head convulsively. He did look like a flamingo. His acne was fierce. His eyes, behind his glasses, looked like raisins.

It took her less time to explain the situation than she had thought it would. What seemed so complicated to her was evidently second nature to him. All the small details which seemed so interesting to her were dismissed by him. He got the point quickly. Emma was, evidently, not the first one to bring it up.

“We can't help you,” he said shortly.

“Why? I thought that's what this Children's Army was for!”

“No.” He sighed. “I seem to spend half my time explaining this. Unless a child is actually being damaged for life, we can't intervene.”

“But . . . can't you see that this attitude toward Willie would be damaging to him?”

“Yes. Of course, I can see that. Look at it this way: if your father were planning to have his feet amputated, we'd do something.”

“Oh, swell.”

“Or even if he were kicking Willie around. But he's not. He's simply saying he doesn't think it's a good idea for his son to be taking dancing lessons. And”—Harrison Carter took a deep breath—“I'm not sure I don't agree with him.”

Emma's mouth fell open.

“Now, before you call me a male chauvinist pig, let me explain. I don't know how it happened, but it seems as
though your brother is off on the wrong foot. He seems to be identifying with his mother, not his father. I can understand, therefore, that his father might want to stop this and get him back on the right track.”

“You'd have to know Willie,” said Emma. She felt tired. This wasn't getting anywhere at all. She was, in fact, beginning to dislike Harrison Carter. He seemed to have everything wrapped up.

“What do you do?” she asked. “Just take nice safe cases you know you can win?”

He frowned, looking down into his Coke. “You know, Sheridan, we've handled some very difficult situations. You haven't been with us long—”

“So far, nothing applies,” Emma interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“So far, nothing that's bothering me or my friends can be handled by the Army, that's what.”

“The Army is always open to complaints. I'm always ready to listen to grievances.” Harrison Carter's glasses seemed to grow thicker.

“Everything that's bothering us has to do with parental attitudes toward us. I mean, nobody is actually doing anything to us, but they're just ruining us, that's all.”

“How?”

“By the way they think about us. It's the way they
see
us. After a while you can't help it, you start to see yourself that way.”

“Oh. You mean, if your father keeps acting like you're a thief, you finally steal?”

“Sort of.” Emma felt that, in some subtle way, she was losing ground. She found herself wishing her father had belted her once, then it would be simple.

Harrison Carter nodded shortly, as though now he understood the problem. This seemed to please him, reinforce him in some way.

“I'm afraid you've misunderstood the purpose, the most valid purpose of the Children's Army, and that is the question of children's rights. The Army is devoted, primarily, to the study of children's rights. The purpose of the complaints being filed and committees handling those complaints is primarily for the education of the membership. Naturally, pressing cases, which are the only kind we handle, are also helped, but the main purpose is not so much to help individuals as it is to impress upon the membership that children have no rights under our legal system. I mean, you understand, don't you, that your father actually owns you, like a slave?”

Emma nodded. She had thought of that, but not in exactly those terms. “He can't sell me, though. Remember that dope addict that tried to sell his baby on the subway?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, we're looking into that. I think we may move on that. Now, there is a serious case.”

Humiliating, thought Emma. My case isn't serious enough. I guess I sound like one of those kids who wants her wallpaper changed. “What does Willie have to do? Come out in a dress for you to see this is serious?” she snapped back at him.

Harrison Carter looked shocked, but recovered quickly. “If, for example, your father were dressing him or forcing him to dress in girl's clothes, we would handle that.”

Emma felt totally frustrated. As usual when she felt like that, she attacked. “By the way, I have a serious complaint about the name of this organization.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I see no reason for it to be called an army. We have no guns, we have no plans to attack anyone—”

“We don't?”

“Do we?” She wondered, suddenly, how much of this group was submerged like an iceberg. Was all that she had seen only the tip?

“You see your reaction?” asked Harrison Carter. “That's exactly why we are called the Children's Army, because, if and when we are ever discovered by adults, or by the police, then at least we have the advantage of instilling fear into their hearts. People will be afraid of something called the Children's Army.”

“What good will that do? If they get afraid, they'll really squash us!”

Harrison Carter smiled. “I don't think you need to worry about that.” He smiled again.

She realized that it was a condescending smile. “Why not?”

“Well, first of all, you're a girl.”

“So?” Emma felt a sinking feeling. Here it comes. They're all alike.

“If we're attacked, we'll mobilize. That is, the boys—”

“Oh, I see. You guys will handle the situation.”

“Something like that.” He seemed to want to change the subject.

“Where are you training all these midget John Waynes?” Emma was furious. They had lied. They had said there was no violence involved. Training for future violence was certainly violence.

“Listen, Sheridan, we've gotten off the subject here. I'd like you to understand that we would like to help your brother, but at the moment we can't. If things get worse, we can discuss it again. You see, if we went in there now, your father would throw us out, and he'd be right. He's just raising his kid the way he sees fit, and that's his legal right. Besides, he's a lawyer, he'd get suspicious, he might even investigate, he might find out things. He might blow everything up in our faces.”

“You're chicken, aren't you?”

“If that's all you want to talk about, Sheridan, I think we'll break up this meeting now.” Harrison Carter took a loud slurp of his Coke and got up. He pulled his jacket around him and went out the door, never looking back.

Emma ordered a hamburger. When it was put down in front of her, she ordered another. She ate steadily through the first and through the second.

The situation, she said to herself, is impossible. My father controls my life. He controls Willie's life. I am only fighting for Willie because I want to fight for myself.

She let this last thought fly through her mind like a southbound goose, not really hearing herself think it.

When it gets right down to it, the Children's Army is no different from any adult organization. Males were in control and would depend upon force. Did they really think they were going to have a war with adults? She had a vision of Harrison Carter in a uniform on a salt flat in Jersey somewhere, saluting and goose-stepping in front of a bunch of three-year-olds.

“Ridiculous,” she said aloud, then remembered where she was. She ordered another chocolate milk.

Whatever the Children's Army was or wasn't, it was not going to help her now. That was clear.

Where did things stand?

This afternoon Willie was being allowed to go to rehearsal. He had told Emma at breakfast that their mother had told Dipsey to pick him up after school. Emma had gotten Willie out of the house before Mrs. Sheridan could change her mind.

My father will find out about it tonight. It's a good thing I ate something, she said to herself as she got up to leave. God knows what dinner will be like.