I and Sproggy (10 page)

He'd waited a long time for this.

Offers to play basketball flooded in. His mother was kept busy handling his phone calls while he was out on the street, letting people look at him in amazement, touch him, ask for his autograph.

Once started, however, his legs wouldn't quit. His body stayed the same size. It seemed as if his head would touch the sky. His picture was on the front page of the paper, and, naturally, he was on TV, answering dumb questions. He had to bend down to talk into the microphone. It was interesting to see the respect with which he was treated. Surely he, too, would be bidden to attend a party at Gracie Mansion.

None of his friends were allowed to play with him any more. Their mothers were afraid he might crush them by mistake.

After the novelty wore off, doctors were called in to see if they could stop the growing process. He was given massive doses of anti-vitamins. Fortune tellers who promised they could help—
NO MATTER WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS: GUARANTEED RESULTS
—were consulted.

Nothing did any good.

His mother, her temper frayed, said, “I can't sit here day after day answering those dopey phone calls. I've got work to do.”

Abruptly the scene shifted, and he and Sproggy were standing in line at a hot-dog wagon. He was first, and although he had no money, the man handed him a bag bursting with food. Behind him, Sproggy thrust out her hand, full of money. But the man, who had suddenly become Janice the Grub, grabbed it and then handed Sproggy an empty bag. Adam ran away, and Sproggy, looking like the little match girl, pursued him, weeping. Then Janice began to chase them both and, fortunately, he woke up.

Throwing back the covers, he thought, I will be nice to her. I will practice being an humanitarian. He checked and breathed a sigh of relief. He was the same size he'd been yesterday. It was a delicious feeling. For once, he was satisfied. He put on his clothes, brushed his teeth, and, in a rush of well-being, made his bed.

“Kenny called,” his mother said while they had breakfast. “I wish you'd tell him not to call so early. He woke me up. He said there's a club meeting scheduled for this afternoon. Second bench along the river, as usual. And don't forget to bring your dues, he said.”

“I told him I wasn't going to be in his stupid old club,” Adam said. “If she's in, I'm out.”

“By ‘she' I suppose you mean Sproggy?”

“You know something, Mom? I never told you this, but that night that I and Dad went out to dinner he asked me to look out for her. For Sproggy. He said Arabella was worried about her and I should take care of her.” Adam laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh. “That's a big fat laugh. She can take care of herself. And a slew of other guys too.”

“Did you tell Dad you would look out for her?” his mother asked.

“Yes,” Adam said. “I promised I would. That was before I knew her. Really knew her, I mean. There's a lot of stuff I could tell you,” he said darkly to his mother, “but I don't want you to worry.”

“If you promised, I guess you'd better follow through as best you can.” She buttered a piece of toast. “One thing about your father, if he promises something, only a catastrophe would stop him from keeping that promise. And he expects the same from you.”

Adam sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “If you only knew, Mom, what I'm going through.”

“I wish you'd talk to me about what's bothering you, Adam,” she said. “That's what mothers are for. It might make you feel better if we talked about it. I'll listen, you know that.”

“Who do you talk to when things bother you?” Adam asked her. “You never tell me when you're worried.”

“Sometimes I do,” she said.

“Did you used to talk to Dad about stuff?” he said. “When you were married?”

“Always,” she said. “Well, not always but most times.”

“Ma, I was wondering about something,” Adam said. He'd been thinking about this for a while, and now seemed the time to ask.

“Yes?”

“That night that Dad was here, with Harry and me,” he said.

“Yes?” His mother had become completely still. She looked at him, giving him her full attention.

“Well, I was just wondering how it was to see Dad again, after he got married to Arabella. And everything,” he finished lamely.

“I felt a little sad, I guess,” she said after some thought. “I'll always have a special feeling for your father. He was my first love, really. I think I'll always love him just a little, but I'm happier not being married to him. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Adam said. But he was relieved at her answer. He'd been afraid she might be unhappy because his father was married to someone else. “Do you think he thinks she's as pretty as you are?” he said.

“Not likely,” she said in an English accent, and they both laughed. It was all right.

“I might tell you in a little while what's on my mind,” Adam said. “It's getting better, though,” he sighed. “There are just some things you can't tell your mother right away,” he said.

“Good heavens, that sounds ominous.” She brushed his hair off his forehead. “It can't be that bad. Can it?”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘that bad,'” Adam said. “What's bad to you isn't necessarily bad to me. And vice versa.”

She thought about that for a minute. “That's true,” she said. “You are getting older and wiser, my friend.”

“I know,” he said.

For lack of anything better to do, he cruised by the park bench to see what was going on. Nothing. Low clouds scudded in the sky, and the sunlight filtered through without much enthusiasm. A couple of guys were throwing a Frisbee around. Adam stood and watched. They didn't throw it his way or even look at him, so he moved on.

“Hey,” he said to the guard at Gracie Mansion, “a friend of mine's coming to a party here on Sunday.”

“Sunday's my day off,” the guard said. “I and the wife are going to New Rochelle for her folks' wedding anniversary. Thirty-five glorious years of togetherness. We all chipped in and bought them a color TV. They'll cry when they see it.”

Adam nodded. A jogger came down East End Avenue, head back, mouth open, eyes half shut. Joggers always looked as if they were in agony, Adam thought, but they must be having a good time. Otherwise, why would they jog? Life was full of questions and very few answers, Adam decided.

When he checked a little later, Steve and Kenny were sitting there, waiting.

“It's about time,” Steve said.

“I wasn't sure I was coming,” Adam said, “after the fight. I told you guys I wasn't in the club any more. Where's Sproggy? Trying to scare up another quarter?”

“You're a million laughs,” Kenny told him.

“She couldn't come today. We wanted to have a business meeting, settle our finances,” Steve said. “My father says if an organization's finances are in a muddle, it's in trouble.”

“Why don't we ask your father to join?” Adam asked sarcastically.

“Oh, he's too busy.” Steve was serious.

“I'm the treasurer, right?” Kenny said. “I'm in charge of collecting the dues.” He checked his notebook. “You're in arrears,” he told Adam.

“I told you I was out,” Adam said. “If it's a chess club, I can't play chess so that lets me out.”

“We changed it,” Steve said. “We're going to make it an investment club instead. We study the market, read the report every day, and plan on what stocks we'll invest in.”

Kenny saw Adam looking at him. “That was his idea,” he said, pointing to Steve. “Not mine.”

“Why'd you change it from a chess club?” Adam asked.

“It was Sproggy,” Kenny said with a long face. “She beat us all the time. She kept stealing our pawns. It wasn't any fun, her winning all the time, so we decided to change.”

Adam was glad. He couldn't help himself. “Is she going to be in the investment club?” he said. She'll corner the market, he thought. He didn't know what cornering the market meant, except that it was good, but it seemed logical that Sproggy would accomplish this feat.

“Sure,” Steve said, “she paid her dues.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Adam said. “What about not letting in girls? I thought that's what we decided.”

“She's not like a regular girl,” Kenny said. “I mean, she doesn't giggle and she doesn't give us a hard time. Not like my sisters.”

“If she was your sister, she'd give you a hard time,” Adam told him.

“You got a point,” Kenny agreed. “But she's sort of your sister and she doesn't give you a hard time.”

Adam shrugged. No sense going into that. Sproggy was taller, stronger, smarter, able to handle herself better than he was.

And he had to learn to live with that and follow through on the promise he'd made to his father.

He couldn't do it. It was too tough, looking after a red-headed Mafioso. Maybe if he was eleven he could handle her. But ten, as he'd already found out, was a bad age.

It wasn't until he was almost home that he realized he'd forgotten to tell Steve and Kenny about Charlie going to a party at Gracie Mansion. He'd call first thing in the morning.

CHAPTER 15

Adam slept late Saturday. When he woke, it was already six. He got a glass of orange juice and turned on the TV. A program about agriculture in the U.S.A. was the best bet. Then he had to make a choice between
Sunrise Semester
and
Casper and Friends
. He settled on
Casper
. Rosalie watched for a couple of minutes, but ghosts always freaked her out so she disappeared.

The sun might come out today. Two days left until school. Adam stood on his head for a while. The TV wasn't any better or worse that way. Just different. The orange juice threatened to come back up so he lay flat on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

Tomorrow was the big one. He couldn't wait to station himself at the fence outside Gracie Mansion and watch Charlie go up the steps, an honored and invited guest. If it couldn't be him, he was glad it was Charlie. Second place was better than none. He'd get all the scoop from Charlie and have plenty to tell his friends. With what Charlie said and his own vivid imagination, he could get together a pretty good story. Fact and fiction were not inseparable, Adam had long ago discovered.

“How come you slept so late?” he asked his mother as she wandered out to the kitchen, yawning.

She only looked at him. She didn't like to talk much when she first woke up.

“I've been up for hours,” Adam said. “I'm going to goof off today,” he told her. “Not do much of anything.”

She drank her first cup of coffee.

“That'll be a nice change,” she said when she'd finished.

The telephone rang. It was Mr. Early. “Hope I didn't wake you,” he said.

“That's O.K.,” Adam told him. “I've been up for hours.”

“Me, too. The thing is, I'm going down to Jersey again, if you can believe it.” Mr. Early laughed apologetically. “That widow I told you about? Well, she called last night, asked me down for Sunday dinner. Says she's got a special dish she worked up just for me. Liver and sausage rolls wrapped in bacon. Sounds mighty tasty, eh?”

Adam made a noise which could've meant almost anything. He thought of saying that Sproggy called hot dogs sausage rolls but decided against it. It seemed he and Mr. Early always wound up talking about food, disgusting food.

“She says the ocean's been like a bathtub,” Mr. Early went on, “so I told her I'd take the bus down. God knows I can't stand much of that ocean, even if it is like a bathtub. Fills my suit up with sand, like I told you, so I can hardly stand up.”

The idea of Mr. Early in a bathing suit boggled Adam's mind.

“Will you feed Burton again for me? I'll be home on the first bus Monday morning, so if you'll pop in on Sunday I'd appreciate it,” Mr. Early said. “I know you have a very important engagement Monday morning so you want to get your rest Sunday night. I can hear those old school bells ringing right this minute.” He laughed. “Can you manage Burton on Sunday?”

“Sure,” Adam said.

“Same rates,” Mr. Early said.

“You don't have to pay me. You already overpaid,” Adam said.

“It's worth it to me. You're a reliable, trustworthy worker,” Mr. Early said. “Not too many like you around these days.”

After he'd hung up, Adam thought about that. I don't know, he said to himself. I know a bunch of reliable, trustworthy kids. There's Kenny. Well, maybe. Not as good as me, I don't think. There's Steve. So-so. How about a girl in his class named Emily MacFadden? She was both those things. She got to take messages to the principal's office, collect papers, cleaned the blackboard, everything. Emily was prim and well-behaved. Her neck was always clean. When she wrote a book report, you could tell she'd read every word, not just the first and last chapter and the front flap, like some he could mention.

Adam headed for the river. There was something soothing about watching the water move, he thought. Maybe he'd be a tugboat captain when he grew up.

As Adam rounded the corner of Eighty-eighth Street and East End Avenue, the brisk wind caught him in the face, bringing the river smell to his nose. And to his ears came a racket from a group of girls across the street. It looked like Janice the Grub and some of her cronies standing in a circle, chanting at someone or something Adam couldn't see.

“Evangelion!” they shouted, “Evangelion!” and the circle let out a roar that would likely wake the Mayor if he was still asleep. If they weren't careful, Adam thought, the guard would think they were a radical group demonstrating against something and call the police.

A mad flurry of activity inside the circle caused the formation to break slightly. The girls put up their arms to protect themselves from a swinging object that clipped them on their heads. Adam had a sudden feeling that he knew who was landing those blows.