I and Sproggy (8 page)

“How come you know what's there?” Steve asked.

“I have to check on things,” Adam said vaguely.

“I sure am hungry, though,” Kenny said.

“My mother says you're a bottomless pit,” Adam said.

“No kidding? My mother says the same.”

The bell rang again. “What is this, Old Home Week?” Adam said. He peered out the peephole at Sproggy standing there, holding a paper bag.

“We don't want any,” he said. “Whatever you're selling, we don't want any.”

Kenny shouldered him aside and took a look for himself. “Speak for yourself, bud,” he said and opened the door.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” he said. “What you got in the sack?”

“Let me help you with that,” Steve said, taking the bag from Sproggy's hands. “Something sure smells good.”

“I had to queue up in front of the most extraordinary wagon parked right on the street,” Sproggy said, directing her remarks toward Kenny and Steve. She ignored Adam and smiled a good deal at the other two.

“They were selling sausage rolls,” Sproggy continued. “They smelled delicious so I bought a bagful. I met Adam's mother downstairs, and she told me he was here, so I took a chance you two would be here also.”

She sure moved in fast on this bunch, Adam thought angrily. You'd think she'd known these guys as long as I have.

“I have never heard of a sausage roll in my life,” Adam said, blood rushing to his cheeks. He was angry at Sproggy, at Steve and Kenny, and, most of all, at himself. He said in a flat tone, full of dislike, “It sounds fairly disgusting.”

Kenny's head disappeared inside the bag. “Oxygen, give me oxygen,” he moaned from inside, his voice muffled. “The little lady has purchased what appears to be hot dogs. With mustard and relish.”

“I don't want any,” Adam said, his mouth watering.

Sproggy, Kenny, and Steve sat cross-legged on the floor and ate. Adam stalked around, talking to Burton. “You're a mess,” he told the parrot. “I ought to be getting two dollars per diem to take care of you. Look at this cage.”

“We'll split his as long as he doesn't want it,” Steve decided, breaking Adam's hot dog into thirds, handing the smallest piece to Sproggy and eating the biggest. Kenny devoured his so fast no one had a chance to measure it. “You don't know what you're missing,” he said.

Adam's stomach rumbled, his mouth filled with saliva. Burton didn't help matters by making a sound, low in his throat, that sounded like a chuckle.

Sproggy laid her backpack on the floor and took out her chess set. “I thought we might practice playing today,” she said. “I say, it's super to be in a club with you all.” She smiled at Steve and Kenny. “You have no idea what a difference it makes, having you two for friends.”

Steve and Kenny looked embarrassed. They looked at Adam. He looked at the floor.

“It's our pleasure,” Kenny mumbled, imitating his father. “It's our pleasure.”

“If I had as many freckles as you, I'd do something about it,” Adam said suddenly, wanting to wound and seeing, from her expression, that he'd succeeded.

She put her hand to her face as if it hurt, and she stopped smiling, which, after all, was what he'd wanted. Why, then, did he feel so ashamed?

Kenny looked shocked. “That's rotten, Adam, and you know it,” he said.

Burton picked that up. “Rotten Adam,” he chortled. “Oh, Adam, rotten, rotten Adam!”

“Shut your lousy mouth or I'll strangle you,” Adam snarled.

Burton ruffled his feathers, stared at Adam with his bleak black eyes, and messed on the clean paper on the bottom of his cage.

Kenny took one look and fell on the floor, laughing as if he would never stop. He rolled around, clutching his stomach, tears of laughter rinsing his cheeks.

“Oh, oh, oh!” he moaned. “That bird has got your number. Man, has he got your number!”

“What happened?” Sproggy asked, bewildered.

“I and my father are going to spend Saturday together,” Adam said suddenly in a most disagreeable voice. He had made it up on the spot, but it was perfectly plausible. “The two of us. We're going to the Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs. Then we'll probably go to the World Trade Center and to a steak house for dinner. Then we might go to a concert at night.”

Sproggy had begun setting out the men on the chess board. That infuriated him further. “And you'd better not horn in,” he said. “We don't want you.”

Sproggy tucked the wrapping from her hot dog into the paper bag neatly and carefully and arose from her spot on Mr. Early's rug. “You chaps may borrow my set for the afternoon if you like,” she said. “I shall go along now. Good-bye.” She nodded to Steve and Kenny, who sat, amazed at the turn of events. “We can practice some other time.”

At the door she paused. “You are beastly,” she said to Adam, with tears in her eyes, her voice trembling. “You are the most beastly person I have ever known. I used to think you were nice. I tried to like you. Mummy told me I'd like you, and I did. But not now.” She slung her pack over her shoulder and left.

“Beastly rotten!” Burton shouted, having the time of his life. “Beastly rotten!”

The three boys sat still, avoiding one another's eyes. Space grew around Adam, like fungus on a tree stump, separating him from Kenny and Steve. Silence made the room seem hot and stuffy and crowded, as if it were filled with bodies. Adam opened a window to let in some air.

“I guess it's time for this dumb bird's stupid soap opera,” he said. “Can you imagine anything as stupid as a parrot watching
All My Children
?”

Burton settled on his perch like an old lady anticipating her afternoon outing. He gave the screen his rapt attention.

“What'd you do that for?” Kenny asked, his voice high and thin, like a violin playing in the distance. “She's not all that bad.”

“Why'd you have to take her in the club?” Adam said. “You didn't even tell me it was a chess club now. I didn't know you guys knew how to play chess, even. How come nobody asked me what I thought?”

“I told you my brother was teaching me how to play,” Kenny said, on the defensive. “My father taught him and he's teaching me.”

“How about you?” Adam asked Steve.

“I read a book about it,” Steve said. “We were going to tell you. We just didn't get around to it.”

“Well, I don't play, so that lets me out, right? That lets me out right on my butt. I didn't want to be in that club, anyway.”

“That's what you told us. You said you were going to quit.” Kenny and Steve got up and dusted crumbs all over the rug.

“If she didn't have a quarter to pay your lousy dues, you wouldn't give her the time of day, and you know it,” Adam said deliberately.

“That's not true,” Kenny said in a loud voice. “We'd take her in even if she didn't have the bread.”

“How about you? You guys pay the twenty-five cents?” Adam asked, smiling at them in an unfriendly fashion.

“We each put an IOU in the till,” Steve said. “When we get our allowance, we pay up.”

“You guys make me laugh,” Adam said. He felt like bawling. “You really make me laugh.”

Kenny opened his mouth, closed it. At the door he turned. “There's nothing wrong with Sproggy,” he said. “She's an O.K. kid. I and Steve like her. We like her a lot. Come on,” he said to Steve. “Let's split.”

Adam and Burton were alone. Crouched in front of the TV, they watched, waiting for the unraveling of terrible events, the inevitable disasters, listening to the droning voices, the sad music, while outside the sun shone.

And inside, all was sadness and woe.

CHAPTER 12

The sound of rain on the windows, which woke Adam Thursday morning, suited his mood. It would probably rain every day until Monday, the first day of school. On Monday the sun would shine in a cloudless sky.

“Ma,” he said at breakfast, dallying with his egg, waiting for the precise right moment to prick the yolk and watch it ooze over his plate. When he was little, his mother had recited a verse to him which went:

Oh, what a fork prick
,

Oh, what a thrust
.

My beautiful yellow middle

Is bust
.

It was his favorite poem.

“Ma, how come I got no ethnic background?” he said.

She stopped reading the paper long enough to look at him over the top of her glasses.

“How come you ain't got no ability to speak properly, either?” she asked.

“I mean it. I got no ethnic background,” he complained. “Everybody else I know has got one. Charlie's got blood from all over. His wife Millie, too. Mr. Early told me he came to Ellis Island from Austria when he was two years old. And Kenny said his great-greatgrandfather was a horse thief in the old country and escaped to America by changing his name. Of course”—Adam broke his toast into tiny pieces—“with Kenny, you got to take everything with a grain of salt. But me. I got nothing to brag about except I was born in Brooklyn. Big deal.”

“You are some deprived kid,” his mother said. “My heart bleeds for you. Your ethnic background is as good as anyone else's.”

“I bet even that creep Sproggy has an ethnic background.” Adam went on complaining, not hearing what his mother said. “I wouldn't be surprised to hear she had a couple of ancestors who fought dragons and slew them. I wouldn't mind slewing some myself.”

“Slaying,” she said.

“What?”

“Never mind.” She shrugged. “I have the feeling I'm fighting a losing battle. But you really are being petty about that child. There's nothing wrong with her. She's rather nice. And very bright. And your father doesn't love you less because Sproggy is his stepdaughter.”

“Who said he did?” Adam said rudely. His mother raised her eyebrows at him.

“What's my ethnic background, then, if it's so hot?” he asked in a belligerent tone. He was tired of talking about Sproggy, thinking about her, worrying about her. In a few days she had charged into his life uninvited and upset more than one applecart. Next thing she'd be president of the club, ordering Steve and Kenny about as if she really
was
a Mafioso.

“Well …” His mother stopped to think. “My grandmother was Italian and my grandfather Irish. How's that for starters? And your father's paternal grandparents were White Russians.”

“Cool,” said Adam. “How about a black Russian? Do I have any of those?”

“Not that I know of. You want everything, don't you?” She got up to get another cup of coffee. Adam licked the last vestiges of egg from his plate. He loved to do this, especially after eating pancakes. The maple syrup tasted better that way than straight out of the bottle.

“Stop that!” she called from the kitchen.

How did she always know? Once, years ago when he was practically still in diapers, she'd told him she had eyes in the back of her head. For a while he'd believed her, even though, no matter how hard he looked, lifting up her hair and searching under it, he never could find those eyes.

“I have to go feed Burton,” Adam said after he'd cleared the table. “And I might go down to talk to Charlie. He signed up to take courses in night school yesterday. Him and his wife Millie are both going back to school. Charlie says education is the key. He says he might be a big shot someday.”

A few minutes later his mother held up the newspaper. “Look at this. Just cast your eye on this.” There on page three, big as life, dressed in a shirt and tie and jacket, was Charlie, smiling as if his face might split in two.

The write-up under the picture read:

DROPOUT AT
13,
HANDYMAN NAMED LEADER OF SPECIAL CONTINUING EDUCATION WEEK

Special Continuing Education Week, so designated by the Mayor, will honor a group of visiting European and American college presidents, as well as one enrollee, selected at random to represent the new breed of student who is taking advantage of the city's expanding educational opportunities. Charles Hagelstrom, handyman in an East Side apartment building, left school in the eighth grade and has been named Special Continuing Student of the Week. He and his wife Millie have enrolled in City University night classes. “I admire education,” Hagelstrom says. “I admire an educated man. Education is the key to better living, and I hope to better myself and the world around me when my wife and I take a variety of courses at the night school.”

Adam snatched the paper from his mother's hand. “Bring it right back, Mom,” he shouted. When he reached the lobby, two other tenants were shaking Charlie's hand, exclaiming over what a fine likeness the picture was.

“Would have known you anywhere,” an old lady was saying. “Doesn't do you justice, though. You're much younger looking in the flesh.” The thin man with her agreed.

Charlie beamed. “That's what my wife Millie says,” he said. “I wanted her to get in the picture, too, but she said no. She's shy, my wife Millie is. When she gets to know you, she's not, but first meeting, she backs off.”

“I'll save you my copy,” the old lady said.

“Thanks, I'd appreciate that,” Charlie said. The super, Mr. Courtney, came out of the back room and scowled. “Work to be done, Charlie,” he said. “You'll have to be a celebrity on your own time.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfectly matched yellow teeth, to show he was only joking.

They took the hint and cleared out. “Hey, Charlie,” Adam said, waving the paper in his face. “Next thing you know, people will be stopping you on the street, asking for your autograph.”

Mr. Courtney stood there, waiting.

“See you around, Adam,” Charlie said. “I'll only give it to 'em on a blank check made out to me.”