Tangled Webb (3 page)

“She needs badly to feel secure. She's got a lot of courage, but she's had a rough time, you know, on her own, with a tiny baby, and all.”

“I know.” He'd told me before about Kelsey's first husband—Tim Blockman his name was. She married this Tim Blockman right out of high school, but after Preston was born the marriage kind of fell apart, and Tim Blockman went off and joined the Coast Guard, and was drowned in a rescue mission during a storm. I guess it was a bad time, all right. I said, “I want to be friends, Daddy. Honest. But it seems like she sort of—pulls back or something.”

“Give her time, Juni. She hasn't much self-confidence yet
and—she's unduly nervous. Especially about you, I think. That's all it is.”

Explaining Kelsey to me again. I wonder if he ever tries to explain me to Kelsey. I hope not. I mean, if Kelsey can't trust me and be friends without a lot of explanations and coaching, then forget it. I don't want her to
pretend
. In fact there are things I don't specially want explained.

I gave up trying to talk about it. I could hear Kelsey upstairs fetching Preston's final drink of water, so the conversation was over anyway.

When she came down I helped her load the dishwasher and even watched TV with her for a while so I wouldn't feel guilty about anything. But after Daddy finished his calls and joined us, I said something about homework and loped on upstairs to my room, and flopped onto my old beanbag chair and sat there remembering things about Margo—I mean on purpose, even when it hurt to remember, even though I knew very well I'd feel worse afterward, not better. It was like shutting myself in a closet to eat a whole box of chocolates.

For instance I went over all the made-up stories she used to tell me, at bedtime or when she was doing something boring like making jam and wanted to entertain us both while she worked. I was just a little kid then, of course—she died when I was barely eight—so they were little-kid stories. One was about a bug named James and another one about a goldfish named Swoosh, and she could just
be
a bug or a goldfish—or a bear or a king, or anything. She never just
told
stories, or just read them, either. She acted them out. Well, she was an actress—semiprofessional, she used to call it, because she didn't work all the time; but she was a member of Actors Equity, and could land a part just about any time she tried,
here with the Hillridge Players or with any other of the little theaters in the Portland area. She usually did one play in the summer and one in winter, with about a month's run each. And Daddy always took me to see any play she was in, even if it was something I was a lot too young for, like
Hedda Gabler
or
The Seagull
; all I remember about that one was asking Daddy in a loud voice if somebody wasn't going to bury that big dead bird and people in the seats around us snickering.

She used to teach me little dance routines too, and the songs to go with them, and we'd do them together in the living room or out in our backyard. I bet I could still do a couple of them, but it wouldn't be the same without Margo mugging away beside me. I know I could still cue anybody for the second scene, third act of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, which I loved so much Daddy took me to see it three times. Margo played Puck, and she was just
magical
, she really was. And once she played the heroine of a real crazy melodrama called
They Shan't Take the Farm
, and we could all recite bits of that. Daddy and I still go through this dumb little ritual—a kind of family joke—that started when she was learning her lines. Whenever anybody happens to ask, “Where are you going?”—which people ask oftener than you'd think—one of us automatically says, “Out of your life, forever!” Then the other says, “I'd kill to stop you!” And the other shrieks, “You mean—?” And the last line is “I mean your lover, Richard!” That's the sequence, and we can't seem to stop till we get to the end, even if we're in a hurry, or not in a silly mood, or in some public place like an elevator and have to gabble through it under our breath. Margo could do it in a piercing whisper.

I guess people must've thought we were mental, sometimes, the three of us. But it was so much fun.

Oh, well. It's over. I wish I'd quit thinking about it. I don't,
usually. I mean, it's not like me to
brood
. I guess it's because of all that last night about my name, and trying to talk to Daddy later and making a flub of it.

I still want to tell him what I really meant. But it's hard to get him alone. Maybe he and I could go for a walk some evening the way we used to, and I could bring it up again, and do it better. I mean, I don't want to be a snerp, or create a big problem or anything. And I don't want to
exclude
Kelsey. Exactly. But I just feel some things ought to stay mine, and Daddy's, and Margo's. And nobody else's.

I hear Kelsey and Preston coming in from the backyard. She's been planting petunias this morning. Preston's probably been making mud pies.
I'm
supposed to be cleaning my room, and I better get at it.

SUNDAY, MAY 19

Alison came over after lunch today so we could do math together, and between us we managed to work all but three problems of that extra-big review assignment. And guess what—Kelsey helped us with the last three! She happened to walk through the dining room when we were slaving away and asking each other how to get square roots and divide fractions, and a lot of other obviously lamebrain questions, and she stopped and answered some of them, then sat down and looked at the stuff we were stuck on, and straightened us right out. I guess she and Daddy do have a lot in common—more than just old movies. They have sort of the same kind of minds. I mean, math is actually
fun
to them.

I said, “Thank you,” and so did Alison, and we really meant it. I did, anyway, because I think I'll always remember about
square roots now. Alison doesn't
want
to remember them a minute after school's out. I asked, “But what if you need to know about them sometime?” and she said she intends to plan her life so she
won't
need to. She'll get an A in math, though. She works hardest at stuff she's bad at.
I
think you ought to work hardest at stuff you're good at, so you can get even better. We argue about it all the time.

Anyway, after we'd finished we all three kept on sitting there at the table—Preston was down for his nap—and Alison said she was going to spend the last three weeks of August with her father in Minneapolis. Her dad and mom have been divorced a long time, but Alison visits him once a year. He works in a men's store there, and plays clarinet in the Minneapolis Symphony, and they have outdoor summer concerts, and she gets to go to them.

“I'm glad Mom and I don't live there anymore, though,” she said. “It's so
cold
in winter. Pop grew up in Minnesota, so he's used to it.”

“I grew up right in this house,” I said. “Where did you, Kelsey?” I mean, because of the math I was feeling all friendly and like I knew Kelsey a little better, and didn't even ask myself if that was the sort of question that might make her act funny.

It was, though. She gave me this startled look and then looked down at her hands, and picked up my math book and put it exactly straight on top of my ring binder, and said real fast, “Oh, up north.”

Alison asked, “You mean Washington? Hey, that's where my mother grew up!” She sounded as if that made them long-lost relatives or something. “Mom went clear through high school in Bellingham, Washington. That's about as far north as you can get and still be in the U.S.A.!” she added, laughing
about it, not meaning anything at all.

Kelsey stiffened up and said, “No, it wasn't Bellingham! It was east of there—a good ways. Just a little place; you probably never heard of it.” Then she said, “Oh! I forgot! I was going to wash that lettuce,” and was out of there and running water in the kitchen before we could say another word.

Alison and I sort of looked at each other, and then she gathered up her books and said she'd better get on home, and did I want to walk as far as the 7-Eleven with her and get a Coke. Well, I said okay, but I wasn't much in the mood, to tell you the truth. I mean, after being all helpful and everything, Kelsey'd just slammed that door again, for no reason.

We'd hardly got to the end of the walk before Alison asked, “Was it me saying ‘Bellingham,' or what? What was the matter?”

“I don't know. Something is.” I've gone about as long as I can without talking to Alison about it.

“How come she didn't want to tell us the name of that little place, I wonder? D'you s'pose it's real grungy or something?”

“Maybe there isn't any such place,” I said.

“You mean she was just making it
up
?”

“Sounded like it. Sounded like she couldn't think of a good name for a town. Maybe she grew up someplace else entirely, and just didn't want to tell us.”

“But that's so—that's so—” Alison groped for a word and came out with “peculiar.” I didn't say anything, and after a while she asked in an interested voice,
“Why
would anybody want to lie about where she grew up and went to school?”

I said, “Are you really asking me, or are you going to tell me?” Alison loves to make up theories about people. She calls it Analyzing Character.

“I'm going to tell you some possibilities. Then you tell me
some. Okay. People lie because they don't want to tell the truth.
Why
don't they want to tell the truth? Ashamed to, maybe.”

“Scared to,” I contributed.

“Yeah! That's better! Only, scared of what? Lemme see. Maybe she's got a police record.”

“In a little tiny town east of Bellingham, Washington?”

“Well, it might be big enough to have a police officer. And anyhow, she might
really
be from Seattle, or L.A., or anywhere. New York! Maybe some Mafia gang is after her!”

“Oh, that's bound to be it. She's the Godfather's granddaughter and he wanted to teach Preston to peddle crack, so she ran away.”

“Or—I'll tell you. This is
it
, really. She's from outer space. She
can't
tell us, see? We wouldn't even believe her.”

“You're right! That's why she's so good at math, doing all that spaceship navigation, but she doesn't dare let anybody know because. . . .” I forget how I finished that one.

By this time we were almost to the 7-Eleven and were breaking each other up. I guess it wasn't really all that screamingly witty, now I write it down. But at least we managed to sweep the whole subject under the rug. For a while, anyway.

TUESDAY, MAY 21

Today was Author Day, and it was
lots
more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Last year when Thomas Terry came it wasn't all that great. He sort of yammered on and on, and never really said anything you could remember afterward.

But Elizabeth Kenilworth is
good
. I've only read one or two of her books, but I'm going to read them
all
now. In fact I went to the library during lunch break and checked out
The Third Owl
. She's pretty old—maybe as old as Gramma—but real lively, with sort of wispy gray-and-black hair pulled up into a knot on top of her head, and long silver earrings, and bright eyes like a squirrel. And she didn't just talk about herself and why she wrote this book or won a prize for that one, she talked about
storytelling
. Alison was right—she actually did tell us how to write books, though it took a lot more than two sentences. And Alison scribbled it all down, just like I said she would.

I have to admit I took some notes, too; Elizabeth Kenilworth made it all sound so simple. But I have a feeling that even if I did every single thing she said, I wouldn't come up with much of a best-seller. There's bound to be more to it than
rules and tricks and stuff—more underneath. You've got to have talent. Well, she said that. She didn't try to fool us.

I wonder if I have any talent. For anything. I never thought so, because I didn't get Margo's singing voice, or her looks—and I sure didn't get Daddy's mathematical brain. I used to dance and playact with Margo all the time, and I
felt
like I was acting, but I guess it never looked like much. Whenever they put on plays at school I usually wind up on the stage crew. The only thing I'm especially good at is English. And I wouldn't have thought writing essays on My Summer Vacation or The Louisiana Purchase was a bit like writing a book.

But one thing Elizabeth Kenilworth said today gave me kind of a different slant on the sort of books
she
writes—not essays but stories. Fiction. She said writing a story is like acting in a play
inside your head
. You take all the parts. And at the same time you're the director—watching what the actors do, and listening to them, and changing the dialogue or the action around when it isn't quite right. She said the primitive storytellers, who were probably already around in caveman days, were the world's first dramatists.

I wonder if I could do that? Act out a play inside my head?

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22

Alison wants to start plotting a mystery book right away. She wants us
both
to do it—I mean, together. I might have known. She had to go straight from school to her orthodontist appointment yesterday so we barely got to discuss it until after dinner, but then we talked on the phone about an hour.

We were arguing, mostly. I said if we didn't even know
how to make up plots all by ourselves, how could we do it together?