The Changeling (17 page)

At last the dinner came to an end, and Cath went to her room to study. Grandmother Abbott went into the kitchen, and Martha was left alone with her parents. Three times she started to say, “I have to tell you something,” and three times it wouldn’t come out. And when it finally did, the pain of saying it must have showed in her face, because her mother and father immediately gave her their full attention. But just then Grandmother Abbott came back into the room, and of course, she stayed to listen.

Martha began at the beginning and told the whole story without too many interruptions. Once Mrs. Abbott asked if anyone
had
talked to Miss Walters about picking Ivy for the dancing part, instead of Kelly.

“No,” Martha said. “No one that I know about, anyway. Why?”

“Well it just does seem a little strange, since Kelly has studied dancing for so long, that she wasn’t given the lead role. Doesn’t it, dear? That is, if the roles were given out on the basis of talent and ability.”

Mr. Abbott smiled knowingly. “I’m beginning to think that that wasn’t the basis,” he said. “It seems to me that this Miss Walters must see herself as something of a therapist, instead of strictly a drama coach. I suppose it’s a valid approach to theater at this level. A bit hard on audiences, however. And a bit hard on the kids who lose out. And if that
is
the case, your Miss Walters should, at least, have made it clear to the ones who missed out, through no fault of their own. If you’re going to take something away from a kid who’s earned it to give it to someone who needs it more, you should at least tell the loser the real reason.”

Martha found that she was breathing very hard, and it wasn’t just from fear, anymore. “For your information, Dad,” she said. “For your information, the reason Ivy got the part was because she was the best. And I know you won’t believe it, but that was the reason I got the part I tried out for, too.”

Mr. Abbott stared at Martha for a moment, and then he grinned. “Good for you, Marty. It’s good to see you stand up and fight for once. But I really wasn’t referring to you—not for a minute. I wouldn’t want you to think that.”

When Martha got to the part of her story about the vandalism and Kelly’s accusation, everybody stopped grinning. Martha just barely got to the end of what Mr. Gregory had said without tears, but when Grandmother Abbott said, “Now tell us the absolute truth, dear. You know we’ll stand by you no matter what?” she began to cry.

“I told you,” she sobbed. “We didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“When did it happen? The vandalism?” Mr. Abbott asked.

“I don’t know for sure. Mr. Gregory asked us about Saturday and Sunday night both, so I guess he’s not sure either. I guess no one is at the school at all on Sunday, so no one would have seen it until Monday morning either way.”

“Well, your grandmother was here at home with you Saturday evening, so we’re all right there,” Mr. Abbott said. “And Cath was home with you last night, wasn’t she?”

“No,” Martha said slowly. “Cath didn’t get home until later. Ivy was here at the house with me until Cath came home. That was about nine or maybe ten. I didn’t notice. Before that Ivy and I did some homework, and then we played some records and Ivy danced. We didn’t go anywhere. Except I walked a little way with Ivy when she left. But Cath was back by then, and I was only gone a few minutes. Cath can tell you that, I think. That is, if she noticed.”

For a long time no one said anything, and then Grandmother Abbott said, “Of course, you don’t know for sure if Ivy went directly home when she left you, Martha.”

Martha looked at her parents. Her father said, “That’s right, Mouse, you really have no way of knowing what happened after that. You say it was a little before ten o’clock.”

Martha stood up and walked out of the room, only shaking her head in answer to their calls for her to come back. She couldn’t have answered if she’d wanted to. In her room she lay down on the bed with her face in the pillow.

In a few minutes Martha’s mother came into the room with a cold wet washcloth for her face.

“You stay right there for now, dear,” she said. “Your father had to run out for just a minute. He promised Mr. Simmons he’d drop over for a few minutes this evening to discuss some tax problem, but he said to tell you he’d be right back. In the meantime you should try to relax. And don’t worry, dear. We know that whatever happened, our little Marty just couldn’t have been to blame.”

“Oh Mother,” Martha said and started crying all over again.

Her mother left then, and it was sometime later that there was another knock on the door and Tom stuck his head in.

“Hey Marty,” he said, “have you seen my—Hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Martha sobbed. “Go away.”

But Tom didn’t go away. He came over and stood by the bed. He stood there shuffling around for a while, and then he patted Martha’s shoulder, which made her cry harder than ever.

“Tell me, Marty,” he said. “What is it?”

“I can’t. Go ask them. They’ll tell you.”

“Okay. Okay,” Tom said. “But take it easy. It can’t be that bad.” And he went away.

Sometime, not too long after that, Martha cried herself into a very sound sleep. Much later she was vaguely aware of someone coming in and taking her shoes off and covering her up. The next thing that happened was a new day.

Martha woke up slowly and reluctantly, knowing that she’d rather not wake up before she was able to remember why. Then she realized that she was still wearing her clothes from the day before, and it all came back in a great suffocating wave.

When Martha hurried into the dining room a few minutes later, everyone else was already there. All of them, all the Abbotts, were sitting around the table—her father and mother, Grandmother Abbott, Cath and Tom. For a moment they all looked at her without saying anything, but even before they spoke Martha knew that something had made a very great difference.

T
HAT DAY, THE NEXT
day after Martha and Ivy were accused by Kelly, was a time that no one in the Abbott family would ever forget. When Martha walked into the dining room that morning, all the rest of them already knew something that made a very great difference. Martha heard about it later in bits and pieces.

She heard that after Tom had found her crying, he had gone to the kitchen, where his mother and grandmother were, and asked what was the matter with the Mouse. So Mrs. Abbott explained, trying to make it sound not too serious so as not to worry Tom, who was always too quick to get caught up in everyone else’s problems. When she finished the story, she said, “We don’t really think that Martha was involved, but if it turns out that she was, it should be easy to prove that she was very little to blame. She has never been in any trouble in her life except when she was under the influence of that Carson child. It’s very much our fault for not being more firm about ending the relationship.”

Tom hadn’t said a word while Mrs. Abbott was talking, but his face had looked more and more strange; and when she had finished, he suddenly reached out and snatched a dishtowel and bowl out of his mother’s hands and threw them across the room with all his might. The bowl smashed into the refrigerator with a great shattering crash, and Tom turned and stalked into the living room and sat there, silent and glowering, refusing to speak to anybody until his father came home from the Simmons’.

Then Tom told all of them about what had really been happening. He started by explaining that one of his friends, Brent Hardison, whose parents had been bridge friends of the Abbotts for years, was a pusher.

“A pusher,” Tom said impatiently, when his father asked him what on earth he thought he was talking about. “A pusher. A dope peddler. He buys grass and speed and acid in the city, and he sells them at school. He’s been doing it for months.”

Then Tom went on to say that on Saturday night he and two other guys had some pills that one of the guys got from Brent. Tom wasn’t sure what they were. Maybe speed, maybe not. Tom hadn’t taken much stuff like that before, and he didn’t know too much about it. Anyway when the effects began to wear off, they decided that they wanted to buy some more, but they were all broke by then—all three of them. They were in one of the guys’ cars, parked down on Warwick near the Junior High, and all of a sudden Tom remembered that when he was in school there, he was the one who took the cafeteria money to the office, because he was such a good reliable boy. And he had seen where the secretary always put it, along with the money from all the other rooms, in the drawer of her desk.

Because they were still feeling strange from the pills, Tom couldn’t remember all the details too clearly, but he did remember that when it turned out there wasn’t any money in the drawer, they had all gotten angry and smashed things up a little. Then they had climbed back out the window and gone home.

The earthquake that shook the Abbotts’ house that night had aftershocks that went on shaking for a long time. Tom and the two other boys who had broken into the school were not sent away to jail or reform school as Martha had feared that she would be. Instead, after their fathers had paid for the damage, they were only put on probation, for a long time; and Tom and the one other boy who also played football were kicked off the team. Brent Hardison, though, spent a long time in Juvenile Hall and then was sent away to a boarding school by his family.

Tom signed up for some art classes to fill the gap in his schedule that football had left, and the adult Abbotts all talked about how bravely he had made the adjustment, with no morbidness or complaints. But Tom told Martha that when he said he really didn’t mind, he meant it.

That very big difference that Martha sensed that morning when she walked into the dining room never entirely went away. It came and went, and changed in various ways—but things were never quite the same in the Abbotts’ house after that. The most important change, as far as Martha could see, was that the Abbotts listened to each other. Not that they always understood each other, or even agreed with each other much more. But it seemed to Martha that after that day, everyone tried a little harder to listen.

A smaller difference that happened soon after that day was that the Abbotts and their next door neighbors, the Peters, stopped speaking to each other for a while. A few days after everything happened, Mr. Abbott went over to talk to the Peters. By then the whole neighborhood was talking about what Tom and his friends had done, but apparently no one was talking about the lie that Kelly had told. During the course of the conversation, Mr. Abbott asked Mr. Peters if he knew about the accusation that Kelly had made concerning Martha and Ivy. And Mr. Peters said quickly that he did know about it, and that Kelly had explained it to him and his wife, and to Mr. Gregory, by the way, to everyone’s complete satisfaction.

Kelly, he said, had explained that it wasn’t a lie. That she
had
heard Martha and Ivy talking about the break-in—
as if
they had done it. Afterwards Kelly realized that the girls had only been pretending—the way those two were always doing. Just playing one of their games of make-believe. But at the time Kelly hadn’t doubted the truth of what she had overheard.

So it was Kelly’s word against Martha’s, and Mr. Abbott left the Peters without saying any more about it; but when he got home he told Tom. So Tom asked Martha and, of course, Martha told him that it wasn’t true. She and Ivy had talked about the play that noon hour, and a little about what Kelly and her friends were up to, with all their whispering. But they hadn’t even discussed the break-in, let alone pretended that they had done it.

The next Saturday Tom was out in front of the Abbotts’ house washing the car when Kelly and a bunch of her friends came up the street. Martha was sitting on the windowseat in her room, and she saw them coming and wondered what would happen. Tom was barefoot and wearing denim cutoffs. He was still tan from a summer of surfing and his blond hair, streaked by the sun, was lighter than his skin, and his football muscles bulged under his T shirt. He had certainly never looked handsomer, and Martha was pretty sure Kelly’s gang of eighth grade boy-worshippers couldn’t resist him; and she was right. They couldn’t. Instead of going into the Peters’ house, they giggled over to watch the car washing.

Even though Martha opened her window a crack, she couldn’t hear everything that was being said. The six girls squealed and laughed and pushed each other, each trying to get closest to where Tom was working. Finally Ginny Davis grabbed the rag out of the bucket and started to help wash the car. Immediately the others began to fight over the rag, tearing off pieces, so that they could help, too. But when Kelly got a piece, Tom straightened up from the hubcap he was scrubbing and took the rag firmly out of Kelly’s hands.

“Not you, Dimples,” he said coldly. “I don’t let liars wash my car.”

Kelly stared at Tom for a second before she turned and stomped home. Halfway there she stopped and called to her friends, and they started to put down their rags. But Tom grinned at them and said, “You mean I’m going to lose all my slaves?” and so they all stayed, washing and then waxing, and flirting for over an hour. After that the Peters stopped talking to the Abbotts for quite a while.

One of the best differences after that fateful day was the one that involved just Tom and Martha. Tom had always been nice to Martha, in the way that he was nice to nearly everybody; but he had always been too busy to spend much time with her. But after that spring, they began to really talk to each other. They talked about things that Martha had never talked about to anyone except Ivy, and also about things that really mattered to Tom. Some of the things she found out about Tom were a surprise to Martha.

One thing that surprised Martha was the way Tom talked about his art classes. He told Martha that he had always wanted to take art, but he’d never had the time before with so many hours of sports and courses that were required for college. Martha knew that Tom could draw well, but she’d never thought about him being really interested in art. It was a surprise to her to think about Tom wanting to take art and not being able to, because she’d always thought of Tom and Cath both as being able to do anything and everything they ever wanted to. There were other things that Tom told her that surprised her. For instance, he told her once that he was glad, in a way, that Kelly had accused Martha of the vandalism at Rosewood Junior High.