You Shouldn't Have to Say Goodbye (2 page)

“Sneakers taste terrible on a Reuben sandwich,” Robin said from the doorway.

Mom glanced at her, then burst out laughing. “Good girl!” she said.

I laughed too and looked at Robin. All the sadness was gone from her face.

Together, Robin and I turned to leave Mom's office, but as I closed the door, I looked back. She had rolled her chair back in front of the typewriter, and as I watched, she put one hand on that place on her back, a kind of puzzled look on her face again. But then she smiled. “Sneakers taste terrible on a Reuben sandwich.” She laughed to herself.

T
HE TROUBLE WITH REUBEN SANDWICHES IS THAT THEY take forever to prepare. It must have taken us an hour to assemble and heat them. Then we put our sneakers on and climbed out of the window of the spare bedroom and onto the garage roof. We settled down in a corner on the flat part near the section that goes up to the peak. It's a perfect place because you can see the street from there, but if you lean backward, toward the ridge, nobody can see you. We were halfway through our sandwiches when a tiny white car pulled up in front of the house and a fat man squeezed himself out. He waddled around the car to the sidewalk, staring up at the house as if he weren’t quite sure he was in the right place. “Hi, mister!” Robin shouted. “Look up here…”

“Hush up!” I tugged at her arm, yanking her back out of sight. “That might be one of Mom's clients!” Mom gets mad if I’m not dignified when she has clients.

Robin stayed with me back out of sight, but she was giggling. “Gosh, is he fat! Probably ate too many Reuben sandwiches.” She grinned. “Did you ever notice how fat people always have tiny cars? They look like they’re wearing them.”

I started to laugh. “Can you imagine what kind of car Julia is going to get when she grows up?”

Robin burst out laughing. Julia is a kid on our gymnastics team, and she's a good kid, but she's fat. She reminds me of the Pillsbury dough boy you see on TV. “A Volkswagen.” Robin giggled. She sighed then and stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. When she had finished chewing, she said, “I’m bored. Let's do something.”

“Robin! We’re already
doing
something. You’re a bird.”

“Yeah, well, I’m restless.” Suddenly, she began to smile. “I have an idea. I want to see what's going on in your mom's office.” She lay on her stomach and started wriggling toward the edge of the roof.

“What are you doing?”

She looked back at me. “Going to lean over the edge and see if I can peek in the windows. See what Fat Man is doing.”

“Robin, you’re going to get me in trouble! Now cut it out.”

She sighed again, but she crept back to me and sat up, cross-legged. “Okay,” she said. “Boring, boring, boring.” She looked around as though searching for something, then turned toward me, a little smile beginning to form again on her face.

“What?” I said. I knew something was coming.

“If your mother has a client, we can figure that they’ll be busy for a while. Right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Maybe even for hours. Right?”

“So?” I said.

“So-ooo.” Robin was smiling. “See that peak up there? I dare
you to get up there and walk on it.” She was pointing to the top of the roof, to the ridge that ran the length of the house. “Bet you can’t do it,” she said.

“Bet I don’t
want
to do it. That's crazy.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Robin, no! You’ll get killed.”

“Only if I fall,” she said, grinning.

“Ro-
bin
!” I tried to make my voice get the warning sound that Mom's does sometimes. “Don’t you dare!”

“I’m going.” She scrambled away on all fours and began climbing the sloped roof to the ridge. She was moving really fast, and even if I could have grabbed her, I didn’t dare for fear she’d fall.

“Robin, Robin, please stop! Please, you’re going to get hurt. Dead.”

“You forget that I’m a robin, a bird. You said so yourself. And birds don’t fall.”

“Funny,” I said, hoping it sounded as sarcastic as I meant it. Robin was still scrambling up, and as I watched her climb, my heart began to pound with fear. At the same time I was just a little jealous. I would love to do that, but I’m way too scared.

“I’m supposed to have a pole,” Robin called down to me. “You know, like those people in the circus who walk the wires— the pole out for balance?”

“Then why don’t you wait till you get one?” I realized it was a stupid thing to say and that Robin would know that it was stupid too, but I would do anything, almost, to stop her. She
gave me a weird look over her shoulder and finished climbing to the peak.

“Hey, this is something,” she said after she had settled herself up there. “You can see everything from up here—the church, even the school.”

“So now that you’ve seen it, why don’t you come down?”

She just grinned at me then, with what she calls her fiendish smile, and began inching herself to a standing position on the ridge of the roof. I watched her, fear making my throat so tight that I could barely swallow. She tottered a little, back and forth, her arms out for balance, but when she looked at me, she was grinning. “Well, here goes nothing,” she said, but even though she was smiling, she didn’t sound quite so sure of herself as she had before. And she was pale. Even from down below, I could see that, pale as a ghost.

“Robin?” I said softly. “Please?”

She either didn’t hear or pretended not to hear, and she started off across the roof, one foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, arms out for balance. I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes and prayed. “Please, God, please. Even though she's a nut, she's my friend. Don’t let her fall.”

I opened my eyes a crack. She was still there, making her way to the far end of the roof, her back to me now so I could no longer see her face. “Please, God, just a few more steps?”

My prayers must have been answered because she was at the end of the roof. Slowly, she inched herself to a sitting position and swung around to face me. She took a deep breath and
smiled, but then, instead of crawling back, now that she had done it, she began to stand up again, as though she were going to walk back.

“Robin!” I shouted. “You’ve already done it! You’ve proved it. Now cut it out.”

She only grinned and began the trip back. Now that she was coming toward me, I could see the fear on her face. She was paler than I’ve ever seen anyone. She wasn’t going to faint, was she? Again, I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes and swung around a little to face the street. And that's when I saw them—my mother and Fat Man, wide-eyed, clutching each other, staring up at the roof at Robin. I turned and looked back too. Robin had just completed the trip and she sank down behind me, creeping into a sitting position. “I did it! I did it!” She grabbed my shoulder.

I nodded, unable to speak, and Robin said it again. “I did…” Then I pointed to the street, to my mother, who looked as if she had just come alive and was rushing toward the house, raising one finger and shaking it at us. “I—did it,” Robin said, with sort of a sinking tone.

“You sure did,” I said.

T
HAT WAS SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AND I DIDN’T SEE ROBIN or talk to her until Monday at school. Mom was so mad at me that I wasn’t allowed to see
anybody
until Monday. She said that what we did was dangerous, and she called Robin's mom and told her about it, even though I cried and begged her not to. “I have to, for her own good,” Mom said. Then, when Daddy returned from tennis that afternoon, I got the big lecture from him about how foolish I had been, even though I didn’t do anything! Half of me was mad at Robin for getting me in trouble, and half of me was scared that she was in even more trouble. I couldn’t wait till Monday morning to find out.

But even then, I didn’t have much time to talk to Robin until gymnastics practice after school. We had been rehearsing for the gym show every day since school started, and that was the day we were to choose the events we wanted to be in. When I finally saw Robin, we were in the gym, getting ready for practice. She looked at me sheepishly. “Sorry,” she said.

“Yeah, me too. Did you get into a lot of trouble?”

She just shrugged. “How about you?”

“I had to stay in all weekend. You know, I really begged my mom not to call yours. But she said she had to.” I tried to mimic
Mom's voice: “‘For Robin's own good,’ she said.” I made a face. “How much trouble did you get into?”

Again, Robin shrugged. “Not much. My mom—I don’t think she even knew what your mom was talking about.” She turned to the ropes. “Come on. Want to climb?”

She swung onto a rope, and I sat down on the mat and quickly pulled off my shoes. I was thinking about what Robin had just said about her mother. How come her mom didn’t understand? What was wrong with her, anyway? But then Robin was yelling down to me. “Will you get your bod up here?”

I grinned at her and swung onto the rope, shimmying all the way up to the ceiling. At the top there's a huge metal rod that holds the ropes, and we’re supposed to climb up, touch it, and then slide back down. Robin was on the rope next to mine, and we practiced a few times, going up and down as fast as we could. Once, when we got to the top, instead of just touching the bar, Robin swung off her rope and onto the rod, holding it as though she were chinning.

“You know better than that!” It was Mr. Anderson, the gym teacher, yelling up at us. “That's dangerous, and you know it.”

Robin quickly switched back to the ropes. “Sorry, Mr. Anderson,” she called down, and she smiled at him.

But he didn’t smile back. “You know the rules, Robin. If you do it again, you’re out of the show. Period.”

“Yes, Mr. Anderson,” she said meekly.

We watched him turn away, and Robin made a face at his back. “Spoilsport,” she whispered. She looked at me. “Everybody
wants to spoil your fun. What routines are you going to do for the show?”

“Floor routines and the ropes. What about you?”

“Ropes and I’m not sure what else.”

“Why don’t you try the balance beam? You’d be great”—I grinned at her—“considering what you did on the roof on Saturday.”

“Nah, too easy. Anyway, did you ever see the faces of the girls on the beam? Miss La-de-das. And besides, only the fattest girls choose the beam.”

I giggled. “Yup, Julia.”

I looked down.

Julia was on the balance beam just then, tottering back and forth, looking like a cow trying to walk a fence. She was wearing tight white shorts, but they were thin, and you could see her underwear through them, pink, with yellow flowers—tank-sized underwear. She got to the end of the beam then and swung around, one foot extended.

“Go, Julia!” Robin yelled.

Julia looked up and grinned, but as she did, she plopped off the beam and onto her rear end on the floor.

“O-kay, Julia!” Robin called.

Julia didn’t look up.

“That wasn’t nice,” I told Robin. “Julia's a good kid.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t mind. She knows I was just kidding her.” She called down though, as if to make sure that Julia knew it was just a joke. “You okay?” she yelled.

Julia nodded, rolled her eyes, and rubbed her bottom, and we all laughed.

“Come on,” I said to Robin. “Let's get down. My arms are killing me. ”

“Wait a minute,” Robin said. “Why don’t we work out a routine with the ropes? Something really spectacular, like maybe climbing up, switching ropes in midair, switching back. Something. Chin off the rod up there.” With her head, she indicated the rod that Mr. Anderson had just shooed her off.

“You get on that, you get thrown out,” I reminded her.

“Not if we don’t do it till the night of the show, and by then it’ll be too late to throw us out.”

“But it's dangerous. He just said so. You know it's too fat to get a good grip on, and slippery, too.”

Robin gave me one of those looks. “Don’t be such a goody-goody.”

“I’m not a goody-goody!”

“Well, whatever. A scaredy-cat then.” Robin started to slide down the rope. “If you don’t want to, I’ll ask someone else. Robert. He won’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

She grinned at me. “Then let's practice.”

I made a face at her; then I grinned back. I knew I had just been had, but it was okay. For the next hour, we practiced hard, racing up and down the ropes as fast as we could, trying to switch ropes part way up, then switch back again. It was hard to do because we had to swing the ropes out to make them meet, then
wrap our legs around each other's rope before switching over. Even though it was exhausting, it was fun. Mr. Anderson watched us for a while, then came to help us. He taught us how to heave our bodies into the swing and how to hug the rope with our legs before switching. Of course, we didn’t try to chin on the bar while he was there, and I hoped Robin would forget about that part of it.