Daphne's Book (12 page)

I started to run after her, but Mrs. Woodleigh opened the door and peered out into the dusk. Seeing me, she shouted, "Go on now, girl, get out of here!"

This time I did what she told me to. As I ran down the driveway, stumbling on the rutted ground, I could see the lights of Adelphia twinkling through the dusk like stars. I ran toward them, anxious to reach the safety and comfort of my own house.

W
HILE MOM
and I were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, I decided to risk asking her a few things. Clearing my throat, I said, "Do all people get kind of crazy when they get old?"

She looked a little surprised by my question. I guess she couldn't imagine what had prompted it. "No, of course not, Jessie. Think of your grandmother. She goes to Europe every summer, she does volunteer work at the hospital three days a week, she has lots of friends. Why, she actually has a more active social life than I do."

"Yes, but she's not really old." I thought of my grandmother, her hair nicely set, well dressed, always ready to share a joke or a good story. And then I thought of Mrs. Wood leigh in her shabby bathrobe, her hair wild, talking about dead men coming back and houses falling down on her head.

"Your grandmother is seventy-three years old, Jessie. She's not exactly a teenager." Mom took the last cup out of the dishwasher and set it on a shelf.

"Well, she doesn't look that old. Or act it."

"That's because she takes good care of herself. She exercises, she watches her diet, she keeps herself busy."

"But some people get crazy when they're old, don't they?"

"It's called senility, Jess-o." Josh opened the refrigerator door, surveyed its contents and shook his head. "Nothing to eat," he groaned.

"How do you get it?" I stared at Josh, the boy genius and walking encyclopedia.

"It's caused by hardening of the arteries. Arteriosclerosis." He dragged the word out, glorying in its many syllables, showing off his awe-inspiring vocabulary. "Your arteries get all clogged up with animal fat and your brain can't get enough blood, so your brain cells start dying. Zap, zap, zap."

Mom frowned. "You make it sound like a video game."

"I didn't invent it." Josh bit into a huge peanut butter and jelly sandwich, dribbling strawberry jam down the front of his shirt.

Trying not to look at the jam on his chin, I asked him if there was a cure for senility.

He shook his head, his mouth stuffed with bread. Swallowing noisily, he said, "Brain cells can't be regenerated. Once they die, that's it. So you just get worse and worse."

"That's awful," I said.

"Maybe you better cut down on the cholesterol," Mom said, watching him pour a glass of milk.

Josh shrugged. "The world will have ended in a nuclear war long before my arteries get a chance to clog up."

On that happy note, Josh left us. In a few seconds, I could hear his video game beeping, bipping, and zapping. Picking up Snuff, I told Mom I was going upstairs to study.

 

Friday night Josh called me to the telephone. It was almost ten-thirty, and the four of us were watching an old Alfred Hitchcock movie on television. Grabbing a handful of Ed's special hot buttered popcorn, I left the room reluctantly, hoping I wouldn't miss too much of the movie.

It was Daphne.

"Are you at McDonald's?" I pulled the phone as far away from the living room as the cord would stretch.

"Yes. I had to wait till Hope fell asleep before I could sneak out." She paused, and I could hear cars and voices in the background. "I wanted to apologize for shouting at you yesterday." Her voice sounded small and faraway. "I was upset."

"That's all right. I shouldn't have said what I did, either."

"Are you coming over tomorrow? I'll understand if you don't want to."

"Of course I'm coming." I glanced at Mom and Ed, but they were too interested in the movie to eavesdrop on my conversation. "Did they turn off the gas and electricity yet?"

"This morning. But it's not too bad. We have a big fireplace in the living room, so we moved our beds down there. It's cozy with the firelight and the candles."

"How about food? Did you cash her checks?"

"Not yet, but Hope and I collected a lot of bottles, enough to buy hot dogs and bread and milk. You don't have to worry about us, Jessica." Her voice was getting an edge to it, and I was afraid she was going to get mad again.

"Besides," she went on, "winter is hard on old people. Grandmother will be better in the spring."

I thought about what Josh had said about arteries and brain cells, but I didn't say anything to Daphne about it. Instead I said I'd see her at two o'clock on Saturday.

"I'll meet you at the mailbox," she said. "We'll go for a walk. I found a wonderful place, Jessica. It's a long way, but it's worth it."

She paused again while a car drove past. "I have to go now. If Hope wakes up and finds I'm gone, she'll be terrified."

"Be careful walking home, Daphne. It's so late."

"Don't worry. I can take care of myself."

After she hung up, I stood there in my warm, safe kitchen. Josh, Mom, and Ed were laughing at a commercial on television, Snuff was rubbing round my ankles, hoping for a handout, and the cuckoo clock over the sink was striking eleven. I was glad that I wasn't walking along a dark road all by myself, and I hoped that Daphne really could take care of herself.

"Who called you so late?" Mom asked as I snuggled up next to her on the couch.

"Oh, it was just Tracy." I bent my head over Snuff, petting her to avoid looking at Mom. I hated lying to her, but I couldn't imagine what she would think of Daphne's being out alone this late at night. Snuff rewarded my attention by growling and struggling to escape. "How did the movie end?"

"Oh, it was great, really great," Josh said. He launched into a detailed description of everything I'd missed, making Mom forget all about the telephone call.

 

On Saturday, I walked out to Daphne's, glad that the sun was shining and the wind wasn't blowing. As she'd promised, she was waiting by the mailbox, alone this time.

"Where's Hope?" I asked.

"I didn't tell her you were coming. She thinks I'm out looking for bottles, and she's keeping Grandmother company. Come on." Daphne ran off across the field, and I followed her into the woods.

Talcing a winding path, she led me through trees and around boulders, climbing uphill steadily. It was lovely in the woods. High up in the bare branches the wind blew gently, and underfoot the ground was soft and rustly with leaves. Squirrels scampered about, and bluejays and crows exchanged cries overhead.

At last we reached the top of the hill and stepped out of the woods. We were standing on the edge of a cliff. Down below us, the Patapsco River wound its way through a narrow valley, glittering in the winter sunlight.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Daphne swept her arm across the sky.

I nodded. "I feel like Daniel Boone exploring the wilderness."

Daphne smiled and sat down on a shelf of rock. Dropping down beside her, I rested quietly, letting the sun warm my back.

"Look, Jessica!" Daphne pointed at a bird circling above us, wings spread. "It's a red hawk."

I watched the hawk drifting up and down on gusts of wind, high above the river and the valley.

"It must be wonderful to be a bird, to be able to fly like that." Daphne sighed. "If people really get reincarnated, I'd like to come back as a bird. A hawk or a sea gull. Something wild and free."

"I think I'd never come down to earth," I said. "I'd sail on the wind forever."

We sat in silence then, watching the hawk until it veered away from us and finally vanished, a tiny speck in the sky.

After a while I remembered the sandwiches I'd made before I'd left home. "Are you hungry?" With a flourish, I presented the sandwiches and a couple of apples.

"You didn't have to bring food." Daphne looked embarrassed instead of pleased.

"I know, but walking makes me hungry." I bit into a peanut butter and banana sandwich that Josh himself wouldn't have found too small. Gesturing at the other one, I said, "Go on, Daphne, eat it."

She shrugged and picked it up. "I am pretty hungry," she admitted. "Grandmother gave the rest of the hot dogs to the cats."

"You better get those checks cashed."

Daphne nodded. "If the weather stays like this, Grandmother might get to the bank next week. In the cold, her rheumatism bothers her, and she can hardly walk."

I shook my head sadly, thinking of my own grandmother. If only Mrs. Woodleigh were like her. Life seemed so unfair sometimes.

As we were finishing our apples, I asked Daphne where she'd lived before she came to her grandmother's house. It was something I'd been wondering about. She'd never really said anything about her mother or her earlier life, and I was curious.

Without looking at me, Daphne gazed off into space. "In Boston," she said.

"With your mother?"

She nodded.

"Did you like it there?"

She nodded again. Looking more closely at her, I realized that she was crying.

"I'm sorry, Daphne. Did I say something wrong?" Ashamed of myself, I huddled on the rock beside her, wishing I hadn't given in to my curiosity. I should have realized that Daphne would have mentioned her past before now if she had really wanted to talk about it.

Daphne shrugged and tried to wipe her eyes. "My mother was driving home from work. It was raining. There was this truck—the driver didn't see her car." Daphne took a deep breath. "She never came home."

My stomach felt quivery just thinking about it. Suppose something like that happened to my mother? I couldn't imagine what it would be like never to see her again. To say good-bye to her in the morning, never dreaming it was the last time. A sharp lump rose in my throat and tears stung my eyes. Silently I stared at Daphne, but she sat, her face turned away from me, looking at something I couldn't see.

"Then they sent us to Grandmother in July. I guess they thought she was the best person to take care of us." Daphne's voice was flat and lifeless.

"You didn't have any other relatives?"

Daphne shook her head. "Neither my mother nor my father had any brothers or sisters, and my mother's parents died before I was born. She did have some cousins and aunts, I think, but I never met them. They lived in Maine. That's where she was born."

"Maybe there's some way you could find them."

Daphne looked at me. The wind played with her hair so that strands of it lifted and fell around her face, making it hard to read her expression. "What's the use?" she asked dully, turning away from me to gaze across the valley.

"Well, I was thinking that if anything happened to your grandmother, if she got worse or something, maybe you could live with them. Then you wouldn't have to worry about foster homes and things like that."

Daphne sighed. "I told you Grandmother will be better in the spring." Daphne tossed her apple core far out into the air and watched it fall down into the valley. "Maybe an apple tree will grow down there, and I'll come back and find it when I'm grown up."

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" I asked, wanting to change the subject to something more pleasant.

"An illustrator, of course." Daphne smiled at me. "And you're going to be a writer. We'll do all our books together, and we'll live in Boston. I know just the street. We can share an apartment in an old townhouse, the kind with a walled-in garden behind it. My studio will have a skylight in the ceiling, and we'll hang plants everywhere."

I stretched out flat on the rock and smiled up at the blue sky. "My den will have a skylight, too, and we'll have lots of cats. A black one, a marmalade one, a calico, a tabby, and a couple of Siamese."

"We'll give parties, and the people who come to them will all be artists and writers."

"We won't know anybody like Sherry and Michelle and Tony."

"No. Our friends will be smart and interesting." Daphne laughed. "Like us. Right?"

I laughed too. "Right."

"And we'll never get married and live boring lives. We'll just have men friends. Lots of them. And they'll all smoke pipes and talk about philosophy and be desperately in love with us."

It was such a daring thought that I laughed even harder. "You're crazy, do you know that?"

"Sure. Crazy people are lots more interesting than normal people. Just look at Sherry and Michelle." She wrinkled her nose and sprang to her feet. "Come on, Jessica, we'd better start walking back."

Taking a long, lingering look at the valley below us, I turned and scrambled over the rock behind Daphne. A crow flew by overhead, cawing, and somewhere below us a dog barked.

About halfway down the hill, we stopped to rest on a fallen tree. Suddenly Daphne laid a hand on my arm and pointed. About fifteen feet away, a deer stepped out of the trees. She paused and sniffed the air. Neither of us made a sound as she moved gracefully down the bank of a small stream and bent to drink the water. Behind her, two more deer appeared, another doe and a young stag. They, too, drank from the stream. Then, sniffing once more, the three of them waded across the stream and vanished among the trees.

"I've never seen a real deer before," I whispered.

"I saw one once standing in the woods, so still I thought I was imagining him. But he wasn't nearly as close as they were." Daphne turned to me, her eyes shining. "Maybe it's an omen. Maybe it means something good will happen to us."

I nodded. "Let's always be very quiet when we're in the woods. Maybe we'll see them again."

Like Indians, we slipped off the limb and walked as silently as we could, trying not to rustle the fallen leaves. As we reached the edge of the woods, I looked across the field toward the road. "Is that Hope down there by the mailbox?"

Daphne nodded. "I told her not to leave Grandmother alone!" Breaking into a run, she dashed across the field toward Hope.

"Daphne!" Hope cried. "You didn't tell me Jessica was coming!"

"Why aren't you home with Grandmother?" Daphne sounded angry.

Hope frowned. "She fell asleep, and I got lonesome. I came out to look for you. You said you were getting more bottles and cans." Hope looked accusingly at Daphne.