I and Sproggy (2 page)

“She heard somebody named Sproggy was coming over. That's enough to put anyone's nose out of joint,” Adam said.

Why couldn't her name be Jane or Sally or Susan? He knew girls by those names. There were three Susans in his class alone. Although as far as he was concerned, all three of them could go jump in the lake. He would have been happy to hold them underwater for a while.

“If there's one thing I can't stand,” Adam told Rosalie, “it's a dog who sulks.” Rosie stared at him, pretending she didn't know him, pretending he wasn't there.

“I do hope this isn't a mistake.” Adam's mother sighed. “This getting together. Sometimes I get carried away.”

“Yes,” Adam agreed, “you do.” Without warning, his thoughts flashed back to the night four years ago when his father and mother had told him they were getting a divorce. He had been six, almost seven. He could see the three of them sitting in the living room, windows open to let in a breath of air. It had been this same time of year and very hot. The sound of taxi horns bleating and a fire truck going by had been very loud.

His father, standing straight, unmoving, hands behind his back, had said, “Your mother and I are getting a divorce. We want you to know, Adam, it has nothing to do with you.”

He knew lots of kids whose parents were divorced. The thought that he might have had anything to do with the divorce would never have occurred to him, but it interested him that his father said that.

“It has nothing to do with anyone but us,” his father continued. His mother, he remembered, had worn a pink dress and a faint, faraway smile. She almost never wore a dress. It must be an occasion.

“We think it would be better if we lived apart. As it happens, I have to go to England for my magazine for a couple of years, so this seemed like a good time.”

A good time?

“What's the matter?” Adam had asked. Even now, after all that time, he could hear himself say, “Do you have a girl friend?” He knew a kid whose father had a few girl friends.

That was the only time in his life Adam had seen his father blush. He didn't know fathers
did
blush. The color rose from his father's neck into his face and made him look younger than usual.

“No,” he'd said in even tones, “I don't have a girl friend. Your mother is still my friend and you are my child and I love you very much.” He didn't say, “I love you both very much.” He'd said, “I love you,” meaning Adam.

“That's O.K., Dad,” Adam had told him, watching his mother's face. Her eyes glittered and she nodded, as if in agreement. She left the room then, and Adam and his father had sat quietly, eyeing each other, not talking, listening to the street noises.

He'd gone to visit his father in England once. Two years ago he'd flown the Atlantic by himself except for a blond stewardess who was supposed to look out for him, see he got off at the right stop. She had paid much more attention to the man sitting next to him, though. The man had asked her if she'd ever been a model or in the movies. She didn't look like any movie person to Adam, and he'd examined her very carefully after the man went to the lavatory.

“Buzz off, sonny,” the stewardess had hissed out of the corner of her mouth as the man came back down the aisle. Adam spent the rest of his trip looking out at the darkness, figuring out how he'd inflate his life raft if the plane had to ditch in the ocean, wondering what his chances were for tripping up the stewardess as she went back and forth. He would have liked to have caught her with a full tray. Like so many of his plans, it didn't work out.

“How come you and Dad are still friends?” Adam asked now. “If you're such big friends, why didn't you stay married?” That had always puzzled him.

She wiped her hands on the sides of her pants. “I told you, Adam. I like your father. As a matter of fact, I like him better now that we're divorced than I did when we were married. We make better friends than we did lovers, you might say.”

She closed her eyes and, clasping her hands in front of her, sang a song about being just friends and lovers no more that made Adam wince at the silly words.

She opened her eyes. “That's all I can remember. My mother's uncle used to play that on the piano when I was a little girl.”

“Nobody would listen to that kind of junk these days,” Adam said in a sour tone.

“You've got to be kidding,” she said. “Some of the junk I hear nowadays makes that sound like Shakespeare.”

Then she hugged him. “Our marriage wasn't a total loss, though. I got you out of it.”

He didn't mind her hugging him. He liked it. But, “You didn't answer my question,” he said, pulling away. “If you like Dad so much, why didn't you stay married?”

She considered. “I don't really know,” she said finally. “We fell out of love, I guess. People fall in love and, if they're lucky, they stay that way. It doesn't always happen, though.”

“Now that Dad got married again, does that mean that you might too?” Adam asked. Harry Carter took her to the theater and other places. Once he'd taken Adam, just the two of them, to the Central Park zoo on Sunday. Harry was all right. There was just one thing. He hadn't known what an aardvark was. Adam forgave him, but he felt, in his heart, that his father would have recognized an aardvark immediately.

Other than that lapse, though, Harry was all right.

“Your father's new wife is named Arabella,” Adam's mother said, pursing her lips as if she hadn't heard his question. “Very English, that. Don't much care for it myself, but then the English have different ideas. They like their toast cold and their mustard hot. Maybe it comes from owning India all those years. Who knows?”

“Mom,” Adam said patiently, “I asked you a question.”

“Yes, you did. Well, I'm thinking.” She looked at him a long time.

“Not without checking with you first, I wouldn't,” she said.

“You wouldn't have to do
that,
” he said, although he thought privately that it would be a good idea. “How old did you say she was?”

He couldn't bring himself to say that name. He also knew the answer, but it was like biting down on a sore tooth. He wanted to make it hurt again and again.

“Two months older than you. They're thinking of sending her to your school if they find an apartment near us.”

“If she was only a boy,” Adam said, lying down on the floor next to Rosalie, putting his cheek against the cool linoleum. “A boy about two years younger than me. Then if the kid looked at me cross-eyed, I'd work him around the head and shoulders.”

“What a lovely, kindhearted, charitable boy you are,” his mother said. “It warms the cockles of my heart to hear you.”

Rosalie sniffed at Adam. Her moods were subject to rapid change. She licked him fondly. Adam sat up.

“You have bad breath,” he told her. “You have such halitosis it's a wonder you have any friends.”

“You'll hurt her feelings,” his mother said. “Poor Rosie.” She patted her. “If only you could talk you could tell him off.”

“I think she can talk. I think she talks to herself at night when we're asleep. I bet she has a big, deep voice.”

“Oh, no,” his mother said. “I imagine her voice is high and dainty, like a lady at a tea party. ‘Will you have one lump or two?'” his mother said, imitating Rosie's voice. They both laughed. Rosalie went out to the living room and lay under the couch. She knew who they were laughing at.

“Should we have cole slaw or potato salad?” Adam's mother asked. “Or both?”

“Both,” he said.

“All right. Would you run down to the corner and get me a half pint of cream for the dessert?” She gave him a dollar.

Adam lifted his feet inch by inch, as if a brick were tied to each shoe. The Bionic Man had taken over. Keeping his elbows close to his sides, lifting his feet high and slow, he left the building and crossed the street. The heck with Sproggy. If he concentrated on perfecting his Bionic Man imitation, she and all other mortals would fall before his superior power. The world would be his. The wind rushed through his hair as he raised his chin and made his eyes mere slits to cut down on any fallout particles. A taxi rounded the corner and nearly nailed him. The driver leaned on his horn and shouted. Adam made it to the store all right. Then he had to get change for the dollar to call home and ask his mother what it was she'd sent him for in the first place.

CHAPTER 3

“Dad called,” Adam's mother said when he returned with the cream. “He wants to take you out for dinner and maybe a movie tonight.” He followed her into her bedroom.

“How come? If he's coming over tomorrow, how come he wants to take me out tonight?” Adam asked. “Who else is going?” If
she
was coming along, he'd stay home.

“Just the two of you. I guess he wants to see you alone so you can talk. He said to tell you he'd go to any movie you want except one with blood and violence in it. He said he doesn't care about you—you're young and strong and can take that kind of thing. But he can't stand the sight of blood in living color. He always did have a weak stomach,” she said fondly. “That and the back of his neck were what attracted me to him in the first place.”

She leaned over and brushed her hair until it crackled. “And it works out very well,” she said, “because Harry's taking me to the ballet.” When she finished brushing, she dipped her finger into a pot of blue and traced the color on her eyelids. He watched, fascinated, as she put smudges of red on her cheekbones, rubbing the color into her skin. Then she darkened her lashes with mascara.

“I am nothing if not a natural beauty,” she said. He liked her better without all that stuff on her face.

“Do you think it would be gilding the lily if I put these on?”

She held up the pair of earrings that Adam's father had given her when Adam was born. They were like a hummingbird's wing, lacy and golden, and Adam loved them more than any other piece of jewelry he'd ever seen.

He sometimes imagined the scene in which his father had presented them to her. There he lay in his mother's arms, his face all squinched and red and furrowed like a newly plowed field. There he was, with both of them looking down at him with such love in their faces that their features were blurred. He had a picture of the three of them that someone had taken right after they'd brought him home from the hospital. It seemed to Adam that the bundle in his mother's arms resembled nothing human, but was more like a troll they'd found under a bridge somewhere. As for his parents, he almost didn't recognize them in the picture—they looked so young and foolish.

She took off her sneakers and put on a pair of shoes with straps and heels. When she stood up, she seemed to have grown several inches.

Adam hoped very much his mother would put on the earrings now. He would never say so. Not in a million years. She had to do it on her own. If she wore them, even if it was when she was going out with Harry Carter, it seemed to him she was donning a part of her life when there had been him, her, and his father. A part of her life that was gone but still there.

“I bet Dad would never give Arabella a pair of earrings like those,” he said.

“No.” She screwed one into her ear. “No, I don't expect he would.”

Adam's father and Harry arrived on the same elevator. “Hi, Dad,” said Adam, as if he'd seen his father only last week.

His father caught him in a bear hug, smashing Adam's nose against his jacket. He wouldn't have minded staying there awhile.

“My Lord, but you're getting big!” he said. “I guess that's to be expected in two years, though.”

“You look great, Dad.” Adam returned the compliment, pleased that his father thought he'd grown.

“Getting a little thin on top,” his father said ruefully, smoothing his hair, “but otherwise no complaints.” Adam recalled that his father had the hair in his family. His grandfather and two uncles looked like Kojak. Baldness was hereditary, Adam knew. He figured he didn't stand a chance. If he didn't start growing, really growing, and soon, he'd probably start losing his hair when he hit high school, and by the time he graduated, he'd look like a bald midget. The thought was not appealing.

Harry ran his fingers through his thick dark hair and smiled at them. Adam was glad to note that, although Harry was taller, his father's shoulders were broader.

“There you are.” His mother appeared, looking very pretty. Why not? She'd spent enough time at it. Too much, Adam thought, no matter what the results. “I see you two have met. Good to see you, Dick.” She gave Adam's father both her hands as if they didn't belong to her and she wasn't sure what to do with them. He took them in his.

“You look marvelous,” he said. She laughed and they stood for a moment as if they were alone.

Adam noticed she laughed more than usual, that her eyes shone and she made fluttery motions with her hands, tossed her hair back from her face with a twist of her head, and, in general, was behaving strangely. He wasn't at all sure he liked it. He secretly considered her appearance extremely interesting, even spacy looking. She was an illustrator, a painter of pictures, a lady who could almost sit on her own hair. Ordinarily, he was proud of her. Now he felt she was being somewhat undignified. As he watched her out of the corner of his eye, she seemed to become more animated every minute.

“You're more beautiful than ever,” Adam's father told her. That didn't help to calm her down any.

Harry stood around clearing his throat. Finally she noticed him.

“Harry dear,” she said, laying her hand on Harry's arm—which Adam felt to be completely unnecessary, “we must be off or we'll miss our curtain. You won't be late, you two, will you?” she asked coquettishly. Adam felt like saying, “Hey, Ma, pull yourself together,” but he didn't.