Remembering Mrs. Rossi (9780763670900) (3 page)

L
ike third graders everywhere, Annie Rossi has good days and bad days in school. A good day at Public School 88 is when they have something delicious (like hot dogs!) for lunch in the school cafeteria; or when a new girl (Jean-Marie) shows up in room 107 and your teacher (Miss Meadows) says (in front of the whole class!), “I think the best place for Jean-Marie is the seat next to
Annie Rossi.
” A bad day, on the other hand, is
any
day you have to read about ugly old
reptiles
in science; or when you have to play
volleyball
in gym and you keep missing
everything
and no one picks
you
for a team.

Not surprisingly, Annie looks forward to an occasional day
off
from school. She especially loves the snowy days (
Come on, snow. . . . More, more snow!
), when they officially cancel school. This hardly ever happens . . . but one day that winter — finally — a fine big storm! All through the night, it sweeps across the city with noisy howling winds. By the time Annie opens her eyes the next morning, snow covers everything as far as she can see. Great big mounds of it! Best of all is the note on her bedside table. Annie and her father often leave each other notes around the house, many of which have something to do with chores, such as this one:

Or this one:

But on this snowy morning, the note Annie finds has nothing to do with chores.

Annie springs off her bed and runs barefoot to the kitchen, where the wonderful smell of coffee fills the air. “I bet it’s two feet deep, Daddy! No, three!” She slides into her seat near the window. “Can I have coffee,” she asks, “in honor of my day off from school?”

“
May
I.” Professor Rossi puts two bowls on the little white table that used to be set for three.

“
May
I, because last week you let me have coffee.” (In fact, it had been mostly milk with a splash of coffee, barely a spoonful.)

“Are you sure it was me?” he teases. “Because I don’t actually approve of children drinking coffee.”

“It was you,” Annie says. “Definitely.”

“Well then”— shaking cereal into the bowls —“I must be an extremely nice fellow.”

“Extremely.”
Annie giggles.

Professor Rossi pours milk in Annie’s glass, then coffee (just a splash). Then he picks up the morning paper and disappears behind it as usual. He always starts with sports. Then around-the-world news, and after that, city news. He does the same thing, in the same order, every single morning, and yet
this
morning it occurs to Annie that what he does is boring. She even feels a little sad on his behalf,
because
he is so boring. She also feels a little sad on her own behalf, because why can’t he just be
fun
for a change? Surely other fathers are fun. Especially on such a special day, a day when they cancel school.

Annie gently knocks two knuckles on the table —
Knock, knock, Mr. Boring!
— then under the table:
Hello, hello! It’s time to plan our snowy day!
The newspaper rustles, but nobody answers her sweet little knocks. Annie makes a face at the back of the newspaper (the kind of face certain grownups find
atrocious
). She makes another face, too, even more atrocious than the one before, and tries to remember if her mother was boring like this at breakfast. No. Definitely not. Mothers talk to their children at breakfast. “Drink your milk, Annie. We don’t want to be late for school. . . .” Yes, mothers pay attention to a little girl and tell her all kinds of interesting news . . . “Guess what, Annie? An
author
is coming to room 222 today. . . .”

Annie’s stomach rumbles hungrily. Maybe she should just go into the living room
alone
. . . and eat her breakfast . . .
alone.
Who would even notice her empty seat at the table? No one! She pictures her skinny little self, eating her cereal all by herself in the living room in front of the TV. . . . “In Jean-Marie’s house, there’s a TV in the kitchen,” Annie says to the back of the newspaper. “
She’s
allowed to watch before school.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Maybe we should have a TV in the kitchen, too.” Annie knows exactly how her father feels about this particular subject, but she likes waiting for him to say, “I certainly don’t think we need a TV in
our
kitchen, Annie.”

“I certainly don’t think we need a TV in
our
kitchen, Annie.”

“You
always
say that.” Annie leans on her elbow and looks out the window at the snow-covered park. She needs to go to the park! Now! With her sled and red mittens and . . . “Okay, Daddy”— suddenly bossy —“I’m going to tell you exactly what we do today. It’s a really good plan, so when will you be finished eating breakfast? Because we have to go to the park. Right away. We have to get there first. . . .”

“Can’t, Annie.” Professor Rossi puts down the paper. “I’m teaching this morning.”

“Daddy”— smiling patiently —“it’s a
no-school
day.”

“Ah!
You
may have no school today . . . but
some
people have to work today.” Professor Rossi shrugs good-naturedly. “Snowstorm or not, the university’s open.”

“But we’re going to the park,” Annie protests. “There’s all that new
snow
in the park and we have to get there
first.
”

“We’ll go later,” he promises. “After my classes.”

Later?
No, they have to go now. Because
later
there are other things to do. Annie picks up her spoon and pokes at her breakfast cereal. (He forgot to buy
her
kind again, so now she has to eat
his
kind again, and that means picking out the raisins.) “You could call in sick,” she suggests. “Like the time you had that cough.”

“But I don’t have a cough.”

“You
could
pretend.” Annie puts four raisins in a napkin and rolls up the napkin.

“By the way, Annie, Mrs. Peterman is going to keep you company while I’m in school.”

“I don’t like Mrs. Peterman. I don’t like any babysitters, and you know it.” This is not altogether true, of course. Mrs. Peterman lives upstairs in apartment 12A and is a really
nice
babysitter, a babysitter who plans really good snacks for after school and lets Annie watch TV, even
before
she starts her homework. (Mrs. Peterman’s favorite soap opera,
The Days and the Nights,
is currently Annie’s favorite thing to watch, too.)

“Baloney,” her father is saying. “Mrs. Peterman has always been like a grandma to you.”

“She’s not my grandma,” Annie grumbles. “I don’t even have a grandma.”

“Fine, but you still need to spend the day with her. And
I
need to spend the day with my kids over at Sherman Hall.”

“They’re
not
your kids.” Annie stomps off to her room. She closes the door hard (in fact, it is a slam) and throws herself on the bed and puts her face in the crumpled-up pillow to be sad for a while.
Nobody in this house cares about me,
Annie thinks sadly.
I’ll have to find another house, where people are NICE, not MEAN. I’ll run away from home and
SOMEONE
will be sorry.
She rolls off the pillow and wraps her arms around her knees, wondering where in the world she might run away to — and that’s when she notices her pajama top is
red
plaid and the bottoms are
green
! Well, now she feels stupid on top of everything else for wearing mismatched pajamas. Annie’s lip begins to quiver. She covers her eyes with both hands, but still the tears jump out — so many tears, and so many reasons for tears! Because her pajamas don’t match and they always used to. Because she had slammed a door. And because she wants to have fun with her
mother
today, and here she is stuck with a father who doesn’t know you do certain things in a snowstorm. He doesn’t know the rules.

“Honestly, Annie. I’ve never known you to be so
huffy.
” A little while later, Professor Rossi is sitting on the edge of Annie’s bed, trying to be silly by using words like
huffy.

“I’m
not
huffy,” Annie mutters, mopping her tears.

“Fine. But the door slamming has to go. Makes me jumpy.” In his silly voice, “Plus, we’ll get a noisy-neighbor reputation.”

“I
didn’t
slam the door. The
wind
blew it.”

“You don’t say?” Eyebrows up.

“I’m very mad at you, Daddy.”

“Oh, I
hate
when you’re mad at me, Annie! It’s so unpleasant!”

“Then don’t go to work today. Stay home with your very own child.”

“But what about my students?” Professor Rossi walks across the room to look out the window. “Think of them, Annie, trudging across campus in all that snow. Just to hear my
scintillating
lecture.”

“You always use big words, and I
hate
when you use big words!” All at once Annie pulls herself to a standing position in the middle of her bed. “See these pajamas?” Turning slowly on the bed. “They don’t
match.
”

“You’re absolutely right.” Nodding. “They
don’t
match.”

“You’re supposed to put the red top with
red
bottoms, not green.”

“Yes, I need to try harder with that laundry,” he agrees, “and perhaps you can show me again about the folding. You do
such
a good job folding laundry,” he adds. “Anything else, Annie? And please, no more complaints!”

Annie slides off the bed. It just so happens she has
lots
of complaints! “Well, it’s
boring
at breakfast when all you do is read the newspaper, that is complaint number one,” Annie says calmly. “You always forget to buy
my
cereal, complaint number two.”

“Yes, but I can explain about the cereal . . .”

Annie doesn’t want his explanations. No sir, she wants to wave her arms in the air, this way and that, and tell her father all the hundreds of things he does wrong every day — all the
millions
of things he simply doesn’t know! “We’re supposed to be the
first
ones making tracks in the park . . . and then we come home and make cookies . . . and eat them hot . . . and that’s what you do in a snowstorm.
Mommy
knows!” Annie blinks with surprise at her very own rush of words.
Mommy knows, Mommy knows. . . .