Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself Read online

  “At her card game … why?”

  “Because she’d know what to do!”

  “I know what to do, too,” Mom said, “… soak it in seltzer water … but that’s not the point. You’ve got to learn to take care of your things … I can’t afford to replace them … money doesn’t grow on trees!”

  “There are some things that are more important than money,” Sally shouted, “or clothes!” And suddenly she started to cry. She ran for the bathroom. When Mom knocked on the door Sally opened it hallway and handed her the soiled dress.

  Sally was stretched out on the floor, drawing. “How old is Daddy going to be on his birthday?” she asked her mother.

  “Forty-two,” Mom said, looking up from her book. “Why?”

  “I want to put it on this card I’m making him,” Sally said, pulling a green crayon from her box of Crayolas. “How soon do I have to mail it?”

  “Tomorrow, to be safe,” Mom said. “His birthday’s the fifteenth.”

  “What do you think of my rhyme?” Sally asked. “Forty-two and I love you!”

  “Original …” Douglas said, munching on a piece of coconut. “Very original.”

  Sally made a face at him and thought harder. “How about this? Don’t be blue just because you’re forty-two.”

  “Oh, God …” Mom jumped up and ran into the bathroom.

  “Smart,” Douglas said to Sally. “Very smart …”

  “What’d I do?”

  “You had to go and bring up the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  “Dad’s age.”

  “So, it’s his birthday.”

  “Yeah … but Uncle Eddie and Uncle Abe were both forty-two when they died … did you know that?”

  “No,” Sally said, “that’s impossible … I remember them … they were both old …”

  “It seemed that way to you because you were only four or something …”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sally said, standing up.

  “Why else do you think she’s in there, crying?” Douglas nodded in the direction of the bathroom.

  “Who says she’s crying?” It made Sally uncomfortable to think of Mom crying.

  Douglas shrugged and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Sally asked.

  “Out.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No!” He let the screen slam shut.

  Sally wished Ma Fanny were home instead of out walking with Andrea’s grandmother. They walked together just about every night, after supper.

  Later, when Sally went to bed, she couldn’t stop thinking about her father, and then about Barbara. Barbara was the only friend she had with no father. Even though very few of her new friends lived with their fathers, they still had them. But not Barbara. Her father was dead … killed in the war. How would it feel to know your father was dead and not coming down for Thanksgiving … that you would never see him again …

  Sally prayed hard. Please God, let Doey-bird get through this bad year … this year of being forty-two … we need him, God … we love him … so don’t let him die. She started to cry quietly, worrying that her father was lonely, that something terrible would happen to him. Keep him well, God … you wouldn’t let three brothers die at the same age, would you? But somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered hearing that bad things always happen in threes. If only she was home in New Jersey now … she’d watch her father carefully … she’d make sure he got plenty of rest and if he caught cold or something she’d make him go straight to bed and stay there … and she’d get him to stop smoking two packs of Camels a day …

  Finally she drifted off to sleep. She dreamed Miss Kay had died. It was raining and they were all at her funeral—Sally, Douglas, Mom, Aunt Bette, Uncle Jack, Ma Fanny. Miss Kay just lay in her coffin, dressed in her nurse’s uniform. She had a kind of smile on her face and was wearing bright red lipstick. But where was Daddy? Why wasn’t he there too? Sally called out and sat up.

  “Shut up,” Douglas said, “some people are trying to sleep.”

  “I had a bad dream,” Sally told him.

  “Well, it’s over now so go back to sleep.”

  At breakfast the next morning Sally said, “I dreamed Miss Kay was dead.”

  “That means she’s going to get married,” Ma Fanny said, pouring the juice.

  “It does? But how would I know that she’s going to get married?”

  “When you dream somebody dies it means they’re going to get married,” Ma Fanny said. “Everybody knows that … right, Louise?”

  “Yes,” Mom said, “of course …” She was browsing through the morning paper, sipping a cup of tea.

  “But suppose the person is already married and you dream that?” Sally said, mashing her shredded wheat.

  “That means the person will stay happily married for years and years,” Ma Fanny answered. “Right, Louise?”

  “Right,” Mom said, looking up from the paper. “And Miss Kay would be very happy to hear about your dream because she’d like to meet a nice man and get married.”

  “You think I should write and tell her about it?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Mom said. “You can wait until the next time you see her.”

  “But I won’t see her for a very long time.”

  “That’s okay,” Mom said. “It’ll keep.”

  Douglas was reading the back of the cereal box. He never had anything to say in the morning.

  “Ma Fanny …” Sally said.

  “What, sweetie-pie?”

  “Do you believe that bad things always happen in threes?”

  “Not always … but sometimes,” Ma Fanny said.

  “How can you tell when it will be like that … when something bad will happen three times?”

  Now Douglas looked over at Sally, as if to warn her to cut it out.

  “You can’t tell,” Ma Fanny went on. “You wait and see … then if it happens three times, you know …”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sally said.

  “Finish your cereal,” Mom told her, “or you’ll be late for school.”

  “It’s all superstition anyway,” Douglas said, yawning.

  “I’m superstitious?” Ma Fanny asked.

  “Yes,” Douglas said. “You knock on wood and all that stuff.”

  “Just to be careful … just in case …” Ma Fanny said, “but not because I’m superstitious.”

  “You told me once if a bird craps on you it’s good luck,” Douglas said.

  “Douglas!” Mom sounded shocked, but not angry. “Watch your language.”

  “Sorry … if a bird lets out his stuff on you …”

  “Douglas!” Now she sounded angry.

  “Well, how else can you say it?” Douglas asked.

  “If a bird plops on you,” Sally suggested.

  “That’s enough!” Mom told them both and Sally and Douglas smiled at each other. He could be such fun when he wanted to. Sally wished he’d want to more often.

  “How do you know all those things, Ma Fanny?” Sally asked.

  “My mother told me … when I was a little girl.”

  “Some people respect what their mothers say.” Mom aimed this remark at Douglas.

  “Bully for some people,” Douglas answered.

  Sally got a letter from Christine.

  Dear Sally,

  Hi! How are you? I am fine. Alice Ingram showed the boys her underpants in the cloakroom. They were light blue with lace around the edges. I always knew she was a show-off! Miss Vickers put me into the listener group in music. I guess I am taking your place. My mother is really mad and is going to complain to the principal. I already know all the Thanksgiving songs by heart and I want to sing them, not just pretend. Our program is the usual, with Pilgrims and Indians and stuff. I hope you are having fun with the other millionaires. You are still my best friend, but until you come home I am pretending that Joan is.

  Love and othe
r indoor sports (what does that mean, anyway?),

  Chrissy (this is what I now call myself)

  After supper all the neighborhood kids came out to play hide and seek. It didn’t get dark as early here as in New Jersey and Sally was allowed to stay outside until eight o’clock on school nights. Mom wouldn’t let Douglas ride his bicycle after supper so he sometimes joined the hide and seek game too. Lately, Andrea tried to hide with Douglas. Sally didn’t like that and was pleased when Douglas told Andrea, “Quit following me … go and hide with Sally.”

  Tonight, Shelby was It. She had to hide her eyes by the big palm tree and count to 120. Sally and Andrea ran off to hide behind the row of bushes near the sidewalk. The bushes grew so high and thick it was easy to stay out of sight.

  “Ready or not here I come …” Shelby shouted and went off to search on the other side of the house.

  “Should we run in?” Sally asked. “I think we can make it.”

  “Not yet,” Andrea said.

  “Hello, little girls …”

  They turned around. Mr. Zavodsky, again!

  “Shush …” Andrea said, putting her finger to her lips. “We’re in the middle of a game.”

  He made a hand motion to show he understood and went away.

  “I don’t like him,” Sally said. “He’s always sneaking up on people.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “How about just now?” Sally asked. “He wasn’t sneaking up on us …”

  “I say he was.”

  “Home free …” they heard Douglas call.

  “Doesn’t he remind you of somebody?” Sally whispered to Andrea.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Zavodsky.”

  “Not especially.”

  “Picture him with a small black moustache and slick dark hair …”

  “Oh yeah …” Andrea said, “I guess he does look a little like my grandfather … come on … let’s run in …”

  Dear Mr. Zavodsky,

  I know you are in disguise. You have shaved off your moustache and let your hair grow in gray but I am not so easy to fool. I happen to be one of the best detectives around and I am working on your case. So watch it!

  They were at the beach on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Mom had been dieting and with her hair in an upsweep and dressed in her new bathing suit she looked taller and slimmer than before. Her skin was very white so she always sat under an umbrella or in the shade of a palm tree. She never went near the water because when she’d been a little girl her father had thrown her into the ocean in Atlantic City, saying that was the best way to learn to swim. She’d been so scared she’d nearly drowned and never tried again.

  Sally couldn’t imagine a father throwing his child into the water. Certainly her father would never do such a thing. And if Ma Fanny had been along that day, long ago, in Atlantic City, she never would have allowed Grandfather to throw Mom in—Sally was sure of that. Sally hardly remembered her grandfather. He had died when she was just three years old, the year before Uncle Eddie and two years before Uncle Abe. Her other grandmother had died when Sally was eight, the same year as Aunt Ruth, Daddy’s older sister, which was six months before Aunt Lena, Daddy’s younger sister.

  Ma Fanny liked the beach. She had just one bathing suit and Sally admired it. It had purple flowers all over and a skirt bottom. Sally found it much more interesting than Mom’s new suit which was plain black. Ma Fanny didn’t swim but she did get wet. She’d stand at the ocean’s edge and splash herself and when she did the loose flesh of her arms wiggled.

  On this day Sally and Andrea had finally convinced their mothers to let them go to the public bathhouse to change before lunch. But they’d had to promise not to use the toilets there.

  “Douglas looked down my bathing suit this morning,” Andrea told Sally, as she stepped out of her wet suit.

  “What for?” Sally asked.

  “To see my tits … what do you think?”

  “So how come you let him?” Sally dried carefully between her toes.

  “I didn’t let him … he just did it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sally said.

  “I don’t care what you believe. It’s true! You’re just jealous because you don’t have tits yet.”

  “I have them,” Sally said.

  “You have buttons, that’s all … you’re still a child.”

  “If I’m such a child how come you play potsy with me every day after school?”

  “That’s different,” Andrea said. “You’re the best potsy player in our house.”

  Sally smiled. At least Andrea admitted that. She was the potsy champion of 1330 Pennsylvania Avenue and she intended to keep it that way.

  “I’ve already kissed two boys,” Andrea said on their way back from the bathhouse. “Did you know that?”

  “Real kisses …” Sally asked, “like in the movies?”

  “One was and the other wasn’t,” Andrea said.

  “Tell me about the one that was …”

  “Well … he was this friend of my cousin Gary’s from Long Island … he’s in eighth grade now but this was over the summer … he thought I was thirteen … at least …”

  “What’d it feel like?” Sally asked.

  “Oh, you know … nothing much … he put his face real close to mine and then I closed my eyes …”

  “Was he that ugly?”

  “No! You’re supposed to close your eyes … you never watch … that’s bad manners …”

  “Oh.”

  “And then he put his lips on mine and we kissed.”

  “Did you like it?” Sally kicked at the sand. If you did it just right you could make it squeak.

  “I told you … it was all right … I didn’t especially like him though … Latin lovers are the best …”

  “How can you tell if a lover is Latin?” Sally asked.

  “Oh, he’ll have dark, flashing eyes and he’ll talk with an accent.”

  “You talk with an accent,” Sally said.

  “I do not!”

  “You do too! You say mothah and fathah instead of mother and father.”

  “That’s not an accent!” Andrea said, annoyed. “Everyone from New York talks that way. You sound just as strange to me, if you want to know the truth. Besides, I thought you love the movies … I thought Esther Williams was your favorite movie star …”

  “She is,” Sally said, “but what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Because you should know about Latin lovers … her boyfriends are all Latin.”

  “The ones who stand around and sing?” Sally asked, surprised.

  “Yes … and the ones who kiss her … like Fernando Lamas …”

  “He’s Latin?”

  “Of course … you should pay closer attention to details,” Andrea said.

  “From now on I will.” Sally thought about Peter Hornstein. He had dark eyes. She wasn’t sure if they were flashing though. She’d have to pay closer attention to details, as Andrea said. Maybe Peter Hornstein would grow up to be a Latin lover. And he liked her. Barbara said so. Wouldn’t Andrea be surprised to hear that Sally had her own Latin lover!

  During supper that night, Sally said, “Mom … where’s Latin?”

  “Latin what?” Mom asked.

  “You know … Latin …”

  “There’s no such place as Latin,” Mom said.

  “Then where do Latin lovers come from?”

  “Who’s been filling your head with Latin lovers?” Mom asked, laughing.

  “Nobody special … me and Andrea were just talking.”

  “She means Latin America, I guess,” Mom said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “South …”

  “Like here … like Miami Beach, you mean?” Sally asked.

  “No,” Mom said, “south of the border … more like Cuba or Mexico or South America.”

  “Oh.” Sally picked up her lamb chop bone. She liked to suck on it after the meat was gone.

&
nbsp; “Latin lovers …” Douglas mumbled, chuckling.

  Sally didn’t answer him out loud but to herself she said, you’re just jealous because you’ll never be one, so ha ha on you, Douglas.

  Mom was singing in the shower. Sally hadn’t seen or heard her so happy in a long time, not since before Douglas had his accident. Tonight Mom was going to Miami, to the airport, to meet Daddy’s plane. It was due in very late.

  Ma Fanny was in the tiny kitchen, baking.

  “Ummm … smells good,” Sally said.

  “I don’t trust this oven,” Ma Fanny said. “I hope it doesn’t ruin my pie or God forbid, my turkey.”

  “Oh, Ma Fanny … you’re such a good cook … you couldn’t ruin anything if you tried.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Ma Fanny said.

  “I’ll knock on wood for you,” Sally suggested, “just to make sure everything comes out delicious.”

  “You knock on wood after it comes out delicious … not before,” Ma Fanny said.

  Sally thumped the wooden table anyway.

  When she and Douglas were in bed and all the lights were out Sally said, “I wish Daddy’s plane landed earlier so they wouldn’t have to stay overnight in that hotel near the airport.”

  “That’s not why they’re staying in a hotel,” Douglas said.

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  “Then, why?” Sally asked.

  “So they can be alone.”

  “But why would they want to be alone?”

  “You know …”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So they can do it,” Douglas said.

  “Do what?”

  “You’re so dumb sometimes …” Douglas sounded disgusted. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “How can I know anything if nobody ever tells me!”

  “Oh … go to sleep.”

  Sally thought about Fernando Lamas kissing Esther Williams, then about her father kissing her mother the same way. Not that she’d ever seen them do that. But it was possible, she supposed. Could that be it then? They wanted to be alone so they could kiss for a long time? Maybe. But that seemed so silly … couldn’t they kiss just as well right here … in the Murphy bed?

  “Doey-bird!” Sally cried, jumping into her father’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She kissed him on both sides of his face.