The Gypsy Game (21 page)

“Different?” It was the first question Garbo had asked.

“Well, yeah. There were just the two of us after that. And we moved a couple of times. And my dad changed a lot. Things were pretty gross for a while, but then my dad started to get a little better and I started going to a different
school and everything was okay. Not great sometimes, but okay. But then, just a few months ago, the Mayfields showed up again and wanted to adopt me. Which was really weird because I was already eleven years old, and up until then they’d never even sent me a lousy birthday card.”

Garbo nodded. “So why? Must be a reason.”

“Right. There is. See, the Mayfields apparently have this thing about having grandchildren to carry on the name and like that. But for a long time they didn’t think they needed me because my mother had a younger brother. This guy named Warren Mayfield the Third. I guess they were kind of counting on him to get married and come up with lots of little Mayfields. But then, just lately I guess, they found out that he’s not going to have any kids, so I was the next best thing. So they decided to let me be Warren Mayfield the Fourth. But only if they could adopt me and change my name and everything. So anyway, my dad said it was up to me. He even let me go to visit them one weekend to see if I liked it.”

“And …?”

“I
hated
it. I mean, it was the pits. They live in this huge, old, boring house way out in the country. Like a museum full of all kinds of fancy stuff that you don’t dare touch unless you’ve just washed your hands. And most of it, not even then. And I had to practically ask permission to breathe, and I had to call them Grand-moth-er May-field and Grand-fath-er May-field, and—and … I hated it. Boy, did I hate it.”

“So your dad said …”

“He told them no. But then, right after Christmas, he got a letter from a lawyer who said that he and the
Mayfields and some kind of a caseworker were going to come to see us. Like, whether we wanted them to or not. The letter didn’t say why they were coming, but my dad said they were probably going to see if they could prove that I was living in an unhealthy environment or something like that, so the state could legally take me away.”

“An unhealthy environment. Dear me, how dreadful,” Garbo said, looking around at the dark, dirty basement. Toby saw what she meant.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, the thing is, we, my dad and I, live in this big old studio on top of a bar and pool hall, and it’s not exactly
Good Housekeeping
, if you know what I mean. So we decided we’d better straighten things up a little before they got there. So we got started on it. My dad fixed up the kitchen, and one of my dad’s friends, my dad has a lot of great friends, gave us these neat old leather couches. So we fixed up a new living room area. And we were going to get everything all cleaned up, only they showed up early. Like three days before they said they were coming and …”

Toby couldn’t help grinning a little, remembering how all four of them had walked in on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. His dad had left the outside door open to air the place out a little, and suddenly there they were.

“And then suddenly there they were,” he told Garbo. “Old Mayfield”—Toby jumped up and did a dignified overstuffed waddle—“in a suit and overcoat, and Grandmother Mayfield in this big mink coat.”

“A mink coat?” Garbo asked, making her eyebrows say how impressed she was.

“Yeah. You couldn’t prove it by me, but my dad said it
was probably mink.” He grinned. “He also said it was Grandma’s personality that made it seem more like grizzly bear.”

Garbo chuckled appreciatively as Toby sat down and went on: “And they had these other dudes with them who were …” He paused and grinned ruefully, remembering what he’d told the other kids about the two hit men.

“Who were …,” Garbo prompted him.

“Well, there was just the one man, really. The lawyer was this tall guy with a real phony smile. The caseworker was short and blond and—well, actually she’s a woman. But anyway, all four of them walked in just when my dad and I were goofing off a little.” Toby grinned again, remembering. “Well, we were having a duel actually, with a mop and broom and garbage can lids for shields. My dad’s really good at fencing, so I kept getting mortally wounded, and I was right in the middle of this dramatic death scene—I do a great death scene—when we looked up, and there they were. Standing around in a circle staring down at me.” Toby might have laughed out loud, if it hadn’t been for what happened next.

“So, what happened next?” Garbo asked, as if she could read his mind.

“So, next …” Toby took a deep breath. “The lawyer said they had to talk to my dad in private, so I got sent away. Only I snuck back into this great hiding place I’d fixed up and heard everything they said.”

“And they said …?”

Toby’s face began to feel tight and hot. He had to work at unclenching his jaw before he could say, “That they had reason to believe that my dad was a drug user and that if he
didn’t agree to the adoption, there would be an investigation.” He swallowed hard and tried to control the screech that was building up in his voice. “Which is a big lie. My dad doesn’t use drugs. Not at all. Maybe he did a long time ago. I don’t know about that. But he sure doesn’t now. Not since—well, you know.”

Garbo nodded. “Yes, I see.”

“But the worst part was that this lawyer dude said they’d probably have to reopen the investigation about what happened to my mother. They’d bring all that up again—and …” For a minute Toby couldn’t go on. “He couldn’t take it,” he finally managed to say. “I just know he couldn’t take it again.” Covering his face with his hands, he sat for a long time without saying anything. Garbo didn’t say anything either. When he was sure he could talk normally again, he took his hands away and said, “After they left, my dad told me everything was all right. He didn’t know I’d been listening. But I could tell everything
wasn’t
all right. Not anywhere near all right. My dad looked … Well, I can remember how he used to look right after my mom died. I was pretty little, but I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget how I used to think he was going to die too. That he was going to die on purpose so he wouldn’t have to go on feeling the way he was feeling. It used to scare the hell out of me. And now he’d started looking that way again. So then, that night after we’d gone to bed I began to think about how, if I was out of the picture, the Mayfields wouldn’t have any reason to bother him anymore, and maybe they’d forget about bringing up all that stuff about my mother, and then my dad would be …”

It was just about then, while Toby was right in the middle
of explaining why he’d had to run away, when he became aware that someone else was in the basement. Someone besides himself and Garbo. And when he whirled around, there they were, a soggy Vince and Mickey, standing just inside the door, dripping rainwater into a big puddle at their feet. Like, maybe they’d been there for a long time, quietly dripping and listening to everything he’d said. Toby got to his feet, nodded coolly to the two wet cellar rats, and went back to his own corner. It wasn’t until he was under the blankets that he really began to lose it.

He stayed there under the covers for maybe half an hour. Maybe longer. Now and then he could hear voices: Mickey’s squeaky and high-pitched one and Vince’s deep, slurred rumble. But he couldn’t hear what they were saying. No one tried to bother him while he was under the blankets, but when he finally did come out, he was surprised to find Mickey squatting just a few feet away, holding something in his hands and smiling his gargoyle grin.

“Hi,” Mickey said. “For you. Vince got them for you.” He was holding out a little packet of soda crackers. Just two crackers in a plastic wrapper, the kind you get in restaurants to eat with your soup.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” Toby took the crackers and tore open the top of the package. Across the room candles were burning in the corner where Vince was writing in a notebook. In her alcove, Garbo seemed to be asleep. Toby ate the crackers slowly, while Mickey went on staring and grinning. The dry, crumbly crackers went down hard and scratchy around the lump in Toby’s throat. When he’d finished eating, he thanked Mickey again and tried to grin back at him, without much luck.

“Mickey,” Vince said. “Give it a break. Go to bed.”

“Okay. Okay, Vince,” Mickey said. Getting clumsily to his feet, he stared down at Toby. When he put out his big, stubby-fingered hand, Toby couldn’t help pulling away, but all the poor guy did was pat him on the head. As if he were a dog or something. Then Mickey went off to his pile of blankets and, after a lot of flopping around, got into a beat-up old sleeping bag and went to sleep. Toby went back to bed, too. He was still lying there wide awake when he heard a sound and opened his eyes. It was Vince, standing right there beside his bed. In the flickering light of a candle his dark face was almost invisible.

“Look kid.” His voice was so soft Toby had to strain to hear. “Go on home. What can they do to him that would be as bad as not knowing where you are?”

He went away then, back to his corner. The candle went out, and Toby was left in the dark, trying not to think about what Vince had said.

But I’m going to call him tomorrow
, he told himself.
That is
,
I will if I can find a pay telephone. And if I can get enough money for the call. I’ll just call
,
and when he answers
,
I’ll say I’m all right
,
and then I’ll hang up before he has time to ask me where I am
.

He thought about what he would say for a long time. Then he must have slept for a while and dreamed about it. In the dream his dad answered the phone, but all he said was that everything was fine, the way he always did when you asked him what was the matter. What he’d always said, even when things were the worst.

When Toby woke up, he could tell it was already late morning. Saturday morning. He listened for a minute to be
sure the other cellar rats were still sleeping, and then he got up and put all his stuff into his backpack. All except for what was left of the bag of cookies, which he left on the floor beside Mickey’s sleeping bag. Then he tiptoed to the door, climbed out, and started down Arbor Street on his way to University Avenue and Maple.

It wasn’t so much that he’d changed his mind, because he really hadn’t. His mind didn’t seem to have had anything to do with it. It was as though some other part of him had made the decision. He was still on Arbor Street, walking faster and faster, when he heard someone shout his name, and there was his father, running toward him.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, his dad shook him fiercely, laughing and yelling stuff like, “You crazy kid. You crazy, idiotic, courageous kid!”

Toby grinned back at him and said, “Yeah, I’m glad to see you too.”

“ALL RIGHT, YOU JERKS,” April practically shouted. “Come to order so we can get started, or else get out of here.”

What April was trying to get started at that particular moment was the first Gypsy meeting since the return of Toby, which was already almost two weeks ago. The meeting was being held in April’s living room, and everybody was there. April and Melanie were sitting on the floor. Elizabeth was curled up in Caroline’s recliner chair, and Ken and Toby had taken over the couch, not to mention the coffee table, where Ken was doing something with a deck of cards. Marshall was curled up with Bear in front of the fireplace.

That’s right, Bear. And it wasn’t the first time he’d been in the Casa Rosada, either. He’d been spending quite a lot of time at the Halls’ and the Rosses’ ever since the adults found out about him
and
heard how he’d helped to solve the mystery of Toby’s disappearance. And then it had turned out that although dogs (or bears) were not permitted as permanent residents in the Casa Rosada, there were no rules against having one as an occasional visitor. So now that Bear, officially speaking, belonged to Toby and lived at the Alvillars’, he could make fairly lengthy visits to the Halls or the Rosses without anyone complaining. Especially
since he’d been to the vet’s for a couple of antiflea treatments. Today just happened to be one of Bear’s days to visit April and Caroline, so there he was right in the middle of the big, important meeting to decide the future of the Gypsy Game.

As far as April was concerned, having Bear as an occasional visitor had some good results and some not so good. One of the good surprises was that it turned out that Caroline had always been a dog lover, and she liked having a part-time dog almost as much as April did.

But then there was the Toby thing. Since Toby usually was the one who brought Bear over for his Casa Rosada visits, it meant that he was around quite a bit, too. April wasn’t too sure just how she felt about that. A couple of times when he was delivering Bear, he came on in and sat at the kitchen table long enough to have a Pepsi and talk to Caroline for a while.

All kinds of people liked to talk to Caroline. That’s what April told Melanie and Elizabeth when they teased her about Toby’s visits. Anyway, she told them, they were just jealous because everyone was dying of curiosity to know why Toby had run away and how everything was going now that he was back with his dad. And having Toby around so much meant that April and her grandmother were the first ones to find out things like the kinds of threats the Mayfields actually had made, and how they turned out to be not all that dangerous.

“Yeah,” Toby had admitted—to Caroline, of course, “I was kind of exaggerating when I said they were threatening to …” He made the throat-cutting motion. But then he went on and told about what the Mayfields had really
threatened to do if his dad didn’t cooperate. All about the lies they were going to tell about his dad and how they were going to reopen the investigation into Toby’s mother’s death.

“How awful,” Caroline said. “What a cruel thing to do.”

Toby nodded, and for a moment there was a strangely serious expression on his face. Then he laughed and said, “But I guess they backed down right away when my dad sicced Roger on them. Roger Wallace the lawyer, that is. See, my dad and Roger have been friends since way back when they were kids, and Roger said the Mayfields didn’t have a leg to stand on and that my dad had all kinds of proof that he hadn’t had anything to do with what happened to my mother. And that he’s been a good father too. Well, not your usual neighborhood Boy Scout leader, Little League coach type, maybe, but not all that bad either.” Toby grinned. “Except for the canned tuna, that is. That’s what I told Roger. That, except for the canned-tuna diet, my dad never tortured me at all. And then the caseworker turned out to be sort of on our side, and after she and Roger talked to the Mayfields’ lawyer they decided to drop the whole adoption thing. And the way it wound up, everybody cooled off some, and I might even visit them once in a while, as long as they let me decide when I want to leave.” Then he grinned again and said, “End of story.”