The Friendship Doll (3 page)

Someone rapped at her bedroom door.

Bunny jumped.

“May I come in?” It was Father.

“Yes, sir.” Bunny hurried to remove her pinafore from the rocking chair, then opened the door for him. He entered, newspaper tucked under his arm, and took the recently cleared-off seat. She waited, a short step away from the chair.

“I think you owe your mother and sister an apology for your behavior at the dinner table.”

Bunny leaned on the arm of the rocker. “But, Father, it’s not fair—”

He held up a finger. “Mr. Reyburn is a man of honor with a difficult task. He made the best decision he could.”

Best?
Bunny wanted to shout, but that would not be proper at all. She took a deep breath and tried again to set forth her case. “But wouldn’t the best decision be to select the best speaker?” Bunny had even caught Mrs.
Newcomb yawning when Belle practiced her speech in front of all the girls.

Father frowned. “Now, Bun. None of that. At any rate, you agreed to be part of the Welcome Committee, and you shall do just that. And do your best, no matter what your role. A Harnden’s word must mean something.”

Bunny shifted back and forth on her stocking feet. It was all very well for Father to say such things. He was the darling of Fifth Avenue. Everyone knew him and thought he was wonderful. He had no idea what it was like to be nobody. To be invisible.

“You’ll do that for me?” he asked.

She fought back a sniffle. “I will.”

Father pushed his glasses up on his handsome nose. “All right, then. Mother is sending Nanny up to”—he waved his hands around uncertainly—“to do something with your hair.” He stood. “We’ll make quite the pair tomorrow, you in your ringlets and petticoats and me in my morning coat.”

Bunny bit back a complaint. Curls meant sleeping on rags. And starched petticoats made her legs itch. City Hall no longer held a promise of triumph, but a sense of doom. Yet she nodded in solemn agreement. She was a Harnden, after all.

“Good.” Father handed her the newspaper he’d brought in with him. “You might enjoy the article in here about the ceremony.”

Bunny took the paper.

Father chucked her under the chin. “Cheer up! Maybe
fashions will change by the time you’re sixteen and instead of coming-out teas, it will be all the rage for the debutantes to make speeches. And you’ll have yours all ready to go.” He laughed at his joke, then glanced at his pocket watch. “Sleep well, Bunny.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

After he left, Bunny changed into her nightclothes, and presently Nanny appeared with the basket of rags and the special concoction to help hold the curl. The goo smelled like Nanny’s liniment medicine. But all the juice had gone out of Bunny and she endured the torture quietly.

“Won’t you be the charmer tomorrow,” Nanny said, slathering on the goo.

A thought crashed like thunder in Bunny’s head. “Winnifred’s not coming, is she?”

The Princess herself, passing in the hall, answered the question. “I will be much too busy writing out invitations in my best hand.” She swished through the doorway. “As if I would attend any function you are at,” she added, in a whisper loud enough for Bunny to hear but too soft for Nanny’s old ears. She twirled out of the room.

Bunny stuck her tongue out at Win’s retreating back.

“Now, now, Miss Bunny,” Nanny chided. “That’s not the way to treat your sister.”

If only Nanny knew. Bunny sat perfectly still, patiently allowing the last two hanks of hair to be slathered with glop and twirled onto a rag. Then she stood up, stretching. “Thank you, Nanny,” she said, mindful of her
manners. She kissed the old lady on her wrinkly cheek. “Good night.”

“You are the one, aren’t you?” Nanny said with a bemused smile.

Bunny wasn’t sure what Nanny meant by that. No matter. She was soon asleep and dreaming of horrible fates befalling one Belle Wyatt Roosevelt.

In the drowsy not-quite-awake moments before Nanny came to pull the drapes the next morning, Bunny remembered the paper Father had left for her to read. She skittered across the cold floor to snatch it from the rocker’s seat. Quick as could be, she was back in bed, scootching around to find the lovely warm spot she’d recently vacated.

It wasn’t Father’s
New York Times
, but the
Town Topics
, Mother’s “bible.” Mother read it faithfully, always on the lookout for mention of their family. Bunny ran her finger up one column and down another, trying to find the article mentioning the ceremony at City Hall. Her finger stopped and she read aloud:

Bunny tossed the paper aside. No mention of the Welcome Committee. Just Belle Roosevelt. Always Belle. She wondered what the newspapers would say if they knew about the real Belle. The one who had backed Bunny into a corner after school and, like the snake she was, hissed in her face, “Good luck with your speech. Because you are going to need it.” Then she’d stomped on Bunny’s new white boots, for good measure. Bunny had never said a word to anyone about it. And look where that honorable action had gotten her!

Nanny brought in a breakfast tray. While Bunny poked at the grapefruit sections and scrambled eggs, a wobbly weed of a thought sprouted. Belle was no orator. She would flub up in some way. It would take only the teeniest-tiniest bit of effort on Bunny’s part to help Belle embarrass herself thoroughly. Bunny’s mind began to whir so that she forgot about her breakfast.

“Do you have the wibble-wobbles about today?” Nanny asked when she saw Bunny’s uneaten breakfast. “Meeting the mayor. My, my.” She forked up a bit of
scrambled egg and held it to Bunny’s lips. “One little bite for old Nanny?”

Bunny opened her mouth, took the offered bite, and chewed thoughtfully. Something would come to her. If only it were spring, rather than January. Then she could pull her famous frog-in-the-pinafore trick. That had turned Win’s last birthday party into a free-for-all of screaming girls. Bunny smiled to remember it. One of her finest moments.

“Come on, dearie.” Nanny nudged her out of her reverie and her bed. “Time to meet the day.” Soon Bunny was wearing her best woolen dress, white stockings with a black garter above each knee, and black dress shoes with straps that buckled at the ankle. Nanny carefully combed each ringlet around her knobby fingers until eight fat brown sausages bounced around Bunny’s head.

“Hold still, lovey.” Nanny fussed and fumbled and finally fastened an enormous satin bow above Bunny’s left ear. This fashion made Bunny feel like some kind of gift package, but it was the latest fad for girls her age, and heaven forbid if Mother didn’t dress her daughters in the current fashion. Bunny did a little twirl for Nanny, who clapped her hands. “You look like a porcelain doll. Prettier than those Japanese ones, I’m sure.”

Even Mother approved, in her own way, when she stopped Bunny in the entryway to give her fingernails an inspection. “Remember, Bunny, pretty is as pretty does.”

“Yes, Mother.” Bunny curtsied.

“Father will be down in a moment. Wait for him in
the library.” Mother gave her a quick hug, then adjusted the satin hair bow. “There. Now, I must find Winnifred.” She hurried off.

Bunny waited in Father’s library as directed. Three steps into the room, her eye fell on Father’s boyhood marble collection. The answer to her troubles was virtually under her nose! Quick as a wink, she snatched up one of the biggest aggies in the enormous glass jar. She was confident she would be able to find exactly the right moment to drop it during the ceremony. The clatter would freeze Belle’s stiff words to the roof of her mouth. Then Bunny
would
have to step forward to save the day with her prettily prepared speech. Bunny was stunned by her own cleverness.

“Ready?” Father stood in the doorway.

“Yes, Father.” Bunny smoothed her fur-trimmed wrapper. “Quite ready.”

Soon, they were in the backseat of the new Town Car, purring their way down Fifth Avenue.

“Best view in the world, right, Bunny?” Father tapped on the rear passenger window as they angled off onto Broadway, just past Madison Square Garden. Bunny nodded agreement, her nose pressed against the glass. It was like having her own silent film rolling in front of her—all the colors and automobiles and pushcarts and people. And so many of those people reading the paper as they went about their business. Just think, tomorrow they’d all be reading about her! Not Belle Roosevelt. She smiled.

Bunny craned her neck as they rolled past the Scribner
Building, where Father had taken her once to meet an editor friend of his. They’d had lunch near there, at that delicatessen, where Father had let her drink an egg cream with her sandwich. When Scribner’s edged out of sight, she turned the other way to look for the spires of First Presbyterian Church, where they attended services on Sundays. Thinking of church and Reverend Speers’ last sermon made Bunny squirm a bit on the seat. His lecture about “pride goeth before a fall” and Mother’s admonition that “pretty is as pretty does” were almost enough to dissuade her from her course of action.

Then she remembered the worst thing—when Belle had written Bunny’s name in her spite book. That had been the kiss of death. No one at Mrs. Newcomb’s had dared befriend Bunny after that. It was all because of Belle that Bunny’s school days were lonely and long.

She felt for the aggie in her pocket. Still there. Now all she had to do was find the right moment to use it.

“Mayor Walker,” Father was saying, “allow me to present my youngest. Genevieve, this is His Honor, the mayor.”

Bunny curtsied and Mayor Walker patted her on the head. He smelled of cigars and something like Nanny’s cough medicine. “The mirror image of your charming wife,” the mayor said, clapping Father on the back. “If I might have a word?”

“Can you find your friends, Bunny?” Father asked as he strode with the mayor through a small door to the right of the reception room. He didn’t wait for her reply.

Father always had to be early. “Ten minutes ahead of time is late,” he said. So Bunny had arrived well before the rest of the Welcome Committee. Including Belle Roosevelt.

The French doors to the reception room were ajar. Bunny nudged them a bit farther apart and squirmed through. Her stomach was reminding her that she had only picked at her breakfast. Perhaps the cookies and punch were already set out and she could have some before anyone else.

The long, linen-draped tables were empty of refreshments, but Bunny wandered into the room anyway, attracted by the lectern opposite her. Glancing around to make sure she was alone, Bunny made her way there. With great poise, she stood behind it, imagining the room positively bulging with distinguished guests. She began to say her speech.

Well, this little one is certainly full of herself
. I watch her declaim and gesture. It seems as if she thinks the spotlight shines on her, and her alone, and as if that were the way it should be.
Such vanity is most unbecoming
. I note to my sisters.

Her speech is pretty
, Miss Japan counters, and my other sisters agree.

It is not bad
, I concede, after listening a bit longer.
But even a perfect pear can harbor a worm within
.

Miss Japan makes no reply to my wise observation. Odd; she generally has something to say on every subject.

Bunny finished her speech, and as the last syllable died away, she curtsied, almost certain she could hear applause.

Wait. There was no
almost
. Bunny’s eyes darted around the still-semidarkened room. The sound was faint, but it was definitely applause. Where was it coming from? She listened harder. From her left, behind her.