THAT'S WHAT I'M TELLING YOU
On the day that Phoebe sat next to me at lunch and told me I was brave, she invited me to her house for dinner. To be honest, I was relieved that I would not have to eat at Margaret’s again. I did not want to see Dad and Margaret smiling at each other.
I wanted everything to be like it was. I wanted to be back in Bybanks, Kentucky, in the hills and the trees, near the cows and chickens and pigs. I wanted to run down the hill from the barn and through the kitchen door that banged behind me and see my mother and my father sitting at the table peeling apples.
Phoebe and I walked home from school together. We stopped briefly at my house so that I could call my father at work. Margaret had helped him find a job selling farm machinery. He said it made him happy as a clam at high water to know I had a new friend. Maybe this is really why he was happy, I thought, or maybe it was because he could be alone with Margaret Cadaver.
Phoebe and I then walked to her house. As we passed Margaret Cadaver’s house, a voice called out. “Sal? Sal? Is that you?”
In the shadows on the porch, Margaret’s mother, Mrs. Partridge, sat in a wicker rocker. A thick, gnarled cane with a handle carved in the shape of a cobra’s head lay across her knees. Her purple dress had slipped up over her bony knees, which were spread apart, and I hate to say it, but you could see right up her skirt. Around her neck was a yellow feather scarf. (“My boa,” she once told me, “my most favoritest boa.”)
As I started up the walk, Phoebe pulled on my arm. “Don’t go up there,” she said.
“It’s only Mrs. Partridge,” I said. “Come on.”
“Who’s that with you?” Mrs. Partridge said. “What’s that on her face?” I knew what she was going to do. She did this with me the first time I met her.
Phoebe placed her hands on her own round face and felt about.
“Come here,” Mrs. Partridge said. She wriggled her crooked little fingers at Phoebe.
Mrs. Partridge put her fingers up to Phoebe’s face and mashed around gently over her eyelids and down her cheeks. “Just as I thought. It’s two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.” Mrs. Partridge laughed a wicked laugh that sounded as if it were bouncing off jagged rocks. “You’re thirteen years old.”
“Yes,” Phoebe said.
“I knew it,” Mrs. Partridge said. “I just knew it.” She patted her yellow feather boa.
“This is Phoebe Winterbottom,” I said. “She lives right next door to you.”
When we left, Phoebe whispered, “I wish you hadn’t done that. I wish you hadn’t told her I lived next door.”
“Why not? You don’t seem to know Mrs. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge very well—”
“They haven’t lived there very long. Only a month or so.”
“Don’t you think it’s remarkable that she guessed your age?”
“I don’t see what is so remarkable about it.” Before I could explain, Phoebe started telling me about the time that she and her mother, father, and sister, Prudence, had gone to the State Fair. At one booth, a crowd was gathered around a tall, thin man.
“So what was he doing?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Phoebe said. Phoebe had a way of sounding like a grown-up sometimes. When she said, “That’s what I’m telling you,” she sounded like a grown-up talking to a child. “What he was doing was guessing people’s ages. All around, people were saying, ‘Oh!’ and ‘Amazing!’ and ‘How does he do that?’ He had to guess your correct age within one year or else you won a teddy bear.”
“How did he do it?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Phoebe said. “The thin man would look someone over carefully, close his eyes, and then he would point his finger at the person and shout, ‘Seventy-two!’”
“At everyone? He guessed everyone to be seventy-two?”
“Sal,” she said. “That’s what I am trying to tell you. I was just giving an example. He might have said ‘ten’ or ‘thirty’ or—‘seventy-two.’ It just depended on the person. He was astounding.”
I really thought it was more astounding that Mrs. Partridge could do this, but I didn’t say anything.
Phoebe’s father wanted the thin man to guess his age. “My father thinks he looks very young, and he was certain he could fool the man. After studying my father, the thin man closed his eyes, pointed his finger at my father and shouted, ‘Fifty-two!’ My father gave a little yelp, and all around people were automatically saying, ‘Oh!’ and ‘Amazing’ and all that. But my father stopped them.”
“Why?”
Phoebe pulled on one of her yellow curls. I think she wished she hadn’t started this story in the first place. “Because he wasn’t anywhere near fifty-two. He was only thirty-eight.”
“Oh.”
“And all day long, my father followed us through the fair, carrying his prize, a large, green teddy bear. He was miserable. He kept saying, ‘Fifty-two? Fifty-two? Do I look fifty-two?’”
“Does he?” I said.
Phoebe pulled harder on her hair. “No, he does not look fifty-two. He looks thirty-eight.” She was very defensive about her father.
Phoebe’s mother was in the kitchen. “I’m making blackberry pie,” Mrs. Winterbottom said. “I hope you like blackberries—is there something wrong? Really, if you don’t like blackberries, I could—”
“No,” I said. “I like blackberries very much. I just have some allergies, I think.”
“To blackberries?” Mrs. Winterbottom said.
“No, not to blackberries.” The truth is, I do not have allergies, but I could not admit that blackberries reminded me of my mother.
Mrs. Winterbottom made me and Phoebe sit down at the kitchen table and tell her about our day. Phoebe told her about Mrs. Partridge guessing her age.
“She’s really remarkable,” I said.
Phoebe said, “It’s not that remarkable, Sal. I wouldn’t exactly use the word remarkable.”
“But Phoebe,” I said. “Mrs. Partridge is blind.”
Both Phoebe and her mother said, “Blind?”
Later, Phoebe said to me, “Don’t you think it’s odd that Mrs. Partridge, who is blind, could see something about me—but I, who can see, was blind about her? And speaking of odd, there’s something very odd about that Mrs. Cadaver.”
“Margaret?” I said.
“She scares me half to death,” Phoebe said.
“Why?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” she said. “First, there is that name: Cadaver. You know what cadaver means?”
Actually, I did not.
“It means dead body.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Of course I’m sure, Sal. You can check the dictionary if you want. Do you know what she does for a living—what her job is?”
“Yes,” I was pleased to say. I was pleased to know something. “She’s a nurse.”
“Exactly,” Phoebe said. “Would you want a nurse whose name meant dead body? And that hair—don’t you think all that sticking-out red hair is spooky? And that voice—it reminds me of dead leaves all blowing around on the ground.”
This was Phoebe’s power. In her world, no one was ordinary. People were either perfect—like her father—or, more often, they were lunatics or axe murderers. She could convince me of just about anything—especially about Margaret Cadaver. From that day on, Margaret Cadaver’s hair did look spooky and her voice did sound exactly like dead leaves. Somehow it was easier to deal with Margaret if there were reasons not to like her, and I definitely did not want to like her.
“Do you want to know an absolute secret?” Phoebe said. (I did.) “Promise not to tell.” (I promised.) “Maybe I shouldn’t,” she said. “Your father goes over there all the time. He likes her, doesn’t he?” She twirled her finger through her curly hair and let those big blue eyes roam over the ceiling. “Her name is Mrs. Cadaver, right? Have you ever wondered what happened to Mr. Cadaver?”
“I never really thought about—”
“Well, I think I know,” Phoebe said, “and it is awful, purely awful.”
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
At this point in my story about Phoebe, Gram said, “I knew somebody like Peeby once.”
“Phoebe,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right. I knew someone just like Peeby, only her name was Gloria. Gloria lived in the wildest, most pepped-up world—a scary one, but oh!—scads more exciting than my own.”
Gramps said, “Gloria? Is she the one who told you not to marry me? Is she the one who said I would be your ruination?”
“Shoosh,” Gram said. “Gloria was right about that at least.” She elbowed Gramps. “Besides, Gloria only said that because she wanted you for herself.”
“Gol-dang!” Gramps said, pulling into a rest stop along the Ohio Turnpike. “I’m tired.”
I did not want to stop. Rush, rush, rush whispered the wind, the sky, the clouds, the trees. Rush, rush, rush.
If all he wanted to do was take a rest, that seemed a safe enough and quick enough thing for him to do. My grandparents can get into trouble as easily as a fly can land on a watermelon.
Two years ago when they drove to Washington, D.C., they were arrested for stealing the back tires off a senator’s car. “We had two flat, sprunkled tires,” my grandfather explained. “We were only borrowing the senator’s tires. We were going to return them.” In Bybanks, Kentucky, you could do this. You could borrow someone’s back tires and return them later, but you could not do this in Washington, D.C., and you could especially not do this to a senator’s car.
Last year when Gram and Gramps drove to Philadelphia, they were stopped by the police for irresponsible driving. “You were driving on the shoulder,” a policeman told Gramps. Gramps said, “Shoulder? I thought it was an extra lane. That’s a mighty fine shoulder.”
So here we were, just a few hours into our trip out to Lewiston, Idaho, and we were safely stopped in a rest area. Then Gramps noticed a woman leaning over the fender of her car. The woman was peering at her engine and dabbing a white handkerchief at various greasy items inside.
“Excuse me,” Gramps said gallantly. “I believe I see a damsel in some distress,” and off he marched to her rescue.
Gram sat there patting her knees and singing, “Oh meet me, in the tulips, when the tulips do bloooom—”
The woman’s white handkerchief, now spotted with black grease, dangled from her fingertips as she smiled down on the back of Gramps, who had taken her place leaning over the engine.
“Might be the car-bust-er-ator,” he said, “or maybe not.” He tapped a few hoses. “Might be these dang snakes,” he said.
“Oh my,” the woman said. “Snakes? In my engine?”
Gramps waggled a hose. “This here is what I call a snake,” he said.
“Oh, I see,” the woman said. “And you think those—those snakes might be the problem?”
“Maybe so.” Gramps pulled on one and it came loose. “See there?” he said. “It’s off.”
“Well, yes, but you—”
“Dang snakes,” Gramps said, pulling at another one. It came loose. “Lookee there, another one.”
The woman smiled a thin, little, worried smile. “But—”
Two hours later, there was not a single “snake” still attached to anything to which it was supposed to be attached. The “car-bust-erator” lay dismantled on the ground. Various other pieces of the woman’s engine were scattered here and there.
The woman called a mechanic, and once Gramps was satisfied that the mechanic was an honest man who might actually be able to repair her car, we started on our trip again.
“Salamanca,” Gram said, “tell us more about Peeby.”
“Phoebe,” I said. “Phoebe Winterbottom.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Gram said. “Peeby.”
BLACKBERRIES
“What was the diabolic thing that happened to Mr. Cadaver?” Gramps asked. “You didn’t tell us that yet.”
I explained that just as Phoebe was going to divulge the purely awful thing that had happened to Mr. Cadaver, her father came home from work and we all sat down to dinner: me, Phoebe, Mr. and Mrs. Winterbottom, and Phoebe’s sister, Prudence.
Phoebe’s parents reminded me a lot of my other grandparents—the Pickfords. Like the Pickfords, Mr. and Mrs. Winterbottom spoke quietly, in short sentences, and sat straight up as they ate their food. They were extremely polite to each other, saying “Yes, Norma,” and “Yes, George,” and “Would you please pass the potatoes, Phoebe?” and “Wouldn’t your guest like another helping?”
They were picky about their food. Everything they ate was what my father would call “side dishes”: potatoes, zucchini, bean salad, and a mystery casserole that I could not identify. They didn’t eat meat, and they didn’t use butter. They were very much concerned with cholesterol.
From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.
For example, at one point Mrs. Winterbottom said, “I believe I’ve made more pies in the past week than I can count.” She said this in a cheery voice, but afterward, in the small silence, when no one commented on her pies, she gave a soft sigh and looked down at her plate. I thought it was odd that she baked all those pies when she seemed so concerned about cholesterol.
A little later, she said, “I couldn’t find exactly that brand of muesli you like so much, George, but I bought something similar.” Mr. Winterbottom kept eating, and again, in that silence, Mrs. Winterbottom sighed and examined her plate.
I was happy for her when she announced that since Phoebe and Prudence were back in school, she thought she would return to work. Apparently, during the school terms she worked part-time at Rocky’s Rubber as a receptionist. When no one commented on her going back to work, she sighed again and poked her potatoes.
A few times, Mrs. Winterbottom called her husband “sweetie pie” and “honey bun.” She said, “Would you like more zucchini, sweetie pie?” and “Did I make enough potatoes, honey bun?”
For some reason that surprised me, those little names she used. She was dressed in a plain brown skirt and white blouse. On her feet were sensible, wide, flat shoes. She did not wear makeup. Even though she had a pleasant, round face and long, curly yellow hair, the main impression I got was that she was used to being plain and ordinary, that she was not supposed to do anything too shocking.
And Mr. Winterbottom was playing the role of Father, with a capital F. He sat at the head of the table with his white shirt cuffs rolled back neatly. He still wore his red-and-blue–striped tie. His expression was serious, his voice was deep, and his words were clear. “Yes, Norma,” he said, deeply and clearly. “No, Norma.” He looked more like fifty-two than thirty-eight, but this was not something I would ever call to his—or Phoebe’s—attention.
Phoebe’s sister, Prudence, was seventeen years old, but she acted like her mother. She ate primly, she nodded politely, she smiled after everything she said.
It all seemed peculiar. They acted so thumpingly tidy and respectable.
After dinner, Phoebe walked me home. She said, “You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but Mrs. Cadaver is as strong as an ox.” Phoebe looked behind her, as if she expected someone to be following us. “I have seen her chop down trees and lug the remains clear across her backyard. Do you know what I think? I think maybe she killed Mr. Cadaver and chopped him up and buried him in the backyard.”
“Phoebe!” I said.
“Well, I’m just telling you what I think, that’s all.”
That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about Mrs. Cadaver, and I wanted to believe that she was capable of killing her husband and chopping him into pieces and burying him in the backyard.
And then I started thinking about the blackberries, and I remembered a time my mother and I walked around the rims of the fields and pastures in Bybanks, picking blackberries. We did not pick from the bottom of the vine or from the top. The ones at the bottom were for the rabbits, my mother said, and the ones at the top were for the birds. The ones at people-height were for people.
Lying in bed, remembering those blackberries, made me think of something else too. It was something that happened a couple years ago, on a morning when my mother slept late. It was that time she was pregnant. My father had already eaten breakfast, and he was out in the fields. On the table, my father had left a single flower in each of two juice glasses—a black-eyed susan in front of my place, and a white petunia in front of my mother’s.
When my mother came into the kitchen that day, she said, “Glory!” She bent her face toward each flower. “Let’s go find him.”
We climbed the hill to the barn, crawled between the fence wires, and crossed the field. My father was standing at the far end of the field, his back to us, hands on his hips, looking at a section of fence.
My mother slowed down when she saw him. I was right behind her. It looked as if she wanted to creep up and surprise him, so I was quiet too and cautious in my steps. I could hardly keep from giggling. It seemed so daring to be sneaking up on my father, and I was sure my mother was going to throw her arms around him and kiss him and hug him and tell him how much she loved the flower on the kitchen table. My mother always loved anything that normally grows or lives out of doors—anything—lizards, trees, cows, caterpillars, birds, flowers, crickets, toads, ants, pigs.
Just before we reached my father, he turned around. This startled my mother and threw her off guard. She stopped.
“Sugar—” he said.
My mother opened her mouth, and I was thinking, “Come on! Throw your arms around him! Tell him!” But before she could speak, my father pointed to the fence and said, “Look at that. A morning’s work.” He indicated a new length of wire strung between two new posts. There was sweat on his face and arms.
And then I saw that my mother was crying. My father saw it too. “What—” he said.
“Oh, you’re too good, John,” she said. “You’re too good. All you Hiddles are too good. I’ll never be so good. I’ll never be able to think of all the things—”
My father looked down at me. “The flowers,” I said.
“Oh.” He put his sweaty arms around her, but she was still crying and it wasn’t what I had imagined it would be. It was all sad instead of happy.
The next morning when I went into the kitchen, my father was standing beside the table looking at two small dishes of blackberries—still shiny and wet with dew—one dish at his place and one at mine. “Thanks,” I said.
“No, it wasn’t me,” he said. “It was your mother.”
Just then, she came in from the back porch. My father put his arms around her and they smooched and it was all tremendously romantic, and I started to turn away, but my mother caught my arm. She pulled me to her and said to me—though it was meant for my father, I think—“See? I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why.
It is surprising all the things you remember just by eating a blackberry pie.